Syntactic Means of Expressing Understatement in the Speech of Modern British Teenagers (Based on the Novel by S. Kinsella ‘Finding Audrey’)

Abstract

The article examines the syntactic means of expressing understatement used in the speech of modern British teenagers based on the material of S. Kinsella's psychological novel Finding Audrey. The author defines understatement as a language category that deliberately underestimates the evaluative reaction to a situation, people and objects with a specific purpose, reflecting the cultural and national characteristics of the British character. Syntactic ways of expressing understatement are considered in the speech of female and male adolescents for the first time. The author concludes that the deliberate pause in the speech of the characters of the novel serves to show restraint of negative and positive emotions and demonstrates linguocultural characteristics of the British.