THE STRUCTURE OF AGENT-TYPE RELATIONS IN RITUALIZED COMMUNICATION (ON THE BASIS OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CULTURE)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the definition and description of the agency’s actional, pragmatic and communicational properties in ritualized forms of communication. The main functional features of the ritual are considered within the general theoretical model of ritualized communication and are illustrated through the example of J.D. Salinger’s novel «The Catcher in the Rye». The analysis of philosophical, sociological, linguistic and anthropological theories as well as some research of agency in ritualized studies allowed forming the general theoretical basis of the research. The article outlines a basic “ritual-founding” level, which indicates “switching” to the ritualized dimension according to the understanding of a ritual as a complex modeling system with a special type of communicative relations between actors caused by a particular type of agency. The proto-function of such a basic ritual act is both adaptive and communicative in a broad sense. The main properties of the agency in the ritualized interaction include super-agency, empowerment, engagement, distributivity, marking. Such a feature as intentionality, which causes numerous discussions among scientists, is acquiring the specific manifestations in the ritualized communication. In ritualized communicative practices there is a tendency for grading and variation of the manifestations of the main components of the agency, depending on the type and field of ritual’s functioning, cultural context, which requires further in-depth cultural and pragmatic linguistic research.