LINGUOPRAGMATICS OF THE SPEECH ACT "REACTION TO A COMPLIMENT" (based on the material of the Ukrainian language)

Abstract

The paper addresses one of the important issues in the field of pragmatics –
the problem of ethnic / cultural specificity of pragmatic reaction to the compliment, which is
understudied as compared to the study of Compliment. The problem of the pragmatic specificity
of the reaction to the compliment in Ukrainian language may contribute to the scientific
research in the field of ethnopragmatics, the pragmatic potential of linguistic-cultural concepts,
ethnic conventions of speech acts.
The purpose of the research is in the revealing of the universal and ethnospecific
characteristics of the reactions to a compliment in the framework of the “face and politeness”
theory, the theory of cooperative principle and implicatures, along with the particular aspects
of the speech acts theory.
The research is grounded on the integrative methodology based on Grice's Cooperative
Principle and the Theory of Conversational Implicatures, Speech Acts' theory and Brown &
Levinson's politeness theory.
The major results refer to the identification of the typical reactions to the compliment
while investigating the ethnospecific manifestations of universal pragmatic strategies of politeness and co-operation. We have identified and described the most widespread reactions of Ukrainians
to compliment. The first type includes the reaction of rejection with the depreciation of the value
of the characteristics denoted by compliment. The second one consists in the compliment
rejection with inversion of the compliment’ssubject. The third one is an implicit rejection. The forth
one is the reaction of rejection with the simultaneous absolutization of the positive-evaluative
characteristic denoted by the compliment. The basic types of ethnospecific manifestations of
universal pragmatic strategies of politeness and co-operation have been identified and analyzed.
The patterns of violations of the cooperative maxims of relevance, quantity and quality of the
information are determined asthe triggers of conversional implicaturessubstantiating the compliment
non-acceptance. Reactive strategies of non-acceptance of the compliment are specified from
the viewpoint of speech acts theory – in the format of the concept of complex illocution.
Conclusions. The paper concludes that the specifics of non-acceptance strategy relies
on the cooperative maxims’flouting, which triggers the conversational implicatures as an additional
explicit substantiation of the compliment non-acceptance. Non-acceptance strategy realizes
the maxim of modesty associated with the structure of the concept of "modesty" in the world
pictures of the Eastern Slavs. Non-acceptance strategy involves additional illocutionary goals
associated either with rejection or with implicit acceptance of the compliment.