The ‘meeting’ situation model in English professional communication

Abstract

The paper describes the “Meeting” situation model using componential analysis. The aim of the present study is to reveal and systematize functional-pragmatic and cognitive features of this professionally regulated genre. The results of the analysis may be summarized as follows: the speech interaction dominant has been revealed; the main speech strategies were defined within studied communicative event for every participant on the basis of their pragmatic goals; these strategies realize their status as a discourse person. The research considers the interrelation between participants’ speech strategies and semantic steps referring to their gender. We present a multilevel model of the situation, its structure and specific features of each level. The components of the cognitive level are constituted by the cultural background, shared by every participant. The distinctive feature of the paralinguistic level is the hierarchy of its components: participants’ pragmatic goals, the hierarchy of their speech strategies based on the criteria “shared/unique”, “dominant/peripheral” and their “contribution” into representing participants’ position status. On the lingua-pragmatic level, speech acts expressing communicative intentions have been summoned as an opposition on the basis of the “expressed modality” criterion, which also reflects some gender peculiarities. On the semantic level, there is no unequivocal correlation of the semantic steps, speech acts and the priority of semantic steps in realizing speech strategies.