Understatement and Overstatement as Objects of Linguoculturological Analysis

Abstract

The research is devoted to the study of understatement and overstatement as linguocultural categories that reflect the peculiarities of the national British character and play a special role in situations of intercultural communication. The author considers understatement as a communicative non-positivity, which consists in non-directness, subjectivity, pessimism, non-categoricity, indirection, manifested in motivational speech acts, as well as in all communication situations where the interests of the interlocutor are affected. Overstatement is defined as communicative attractiveness, which implies emotivity, hyperbolized evaluativeness, optimism and informality (democracy), which are characteristic of expressive speech acts. The content of these linguocultural categories is a system of ritualized strategies of communicative behavior (verbal and nonverbal) aimed at harmonious, conflict-free communication and compliance with cultural traditions and norms in interactive communication. The generalization of strategies of understatement and overstatement in the speech of an Englishman reveals not only his strategic intentions, but also the subtle mechanism of interpersonal communication in the British linguoculture.