Factors Affecting the Ways and Forms of Expressing Communicative Purposes

Any speech acts are characterized by a multiplicity of ways and forms of expressing communicative purpose.

Statements, having a different manifestational structure, non-identical meaning, can express the same intention and, conversely, syntactically-semantically identical statements can express different communicative intentions of the speaker.

The purpose of this work is to determine the factors of communicative context, affecting the construction of a particular statement. To implement this goal, specific tasks are set: to identify the types of communication situations, to determine the specificity of the choice of language means and to show its connection with the concept of norm. The material for this study is original texts selected from textbooks on business correspondence. Private correspondence is taken from published collections of letters of prominent writers of the XXth century.

To solve these questions, we will use the typological method, which will help us isolate and classify the linguistic objects under study according to certain characteristics.

Following Van Dijk, we distinguish between "situation" and "context": "The situation is the actual state of affairs in which the communicative event took place"

Communicative context can be defined as a type of social context that includes a certain set of meaningful components of the communicative situation that determines the choice of the form of expression of the speech act

The degree of determinacy of the speaker’s speech behavior depends on the degree of standardization of this or that speech act, this or that communication situation. Here, we can distinguish two types of situations.

The first type of situations includes etiquette speech situations. Each such situation is assigned a certain set of forms, the use of which is carried out by the speaker automatically, depending on his social role and the situation of communication. Speech acts expressing the reaction to the behavior of others, i.e. gratitude, condolences, congratulations, wishes, apologies and declarative speech acts are such. For example: I beg to inform you, May I thank you for...? etc.

The second type is speech situations in which the speaker has a set of options for expressing his communicative intent, of which he makes a choice of the preferred form.

This type of situation is the most common. The choice of one or another appropriate variant is determined by extralinguistic factors, such as status, position, age of communicators, the situation of communication, the degree of socio-psychological distance, etc. What do you want in here? – a question and an order to leave with a rude connotation, different status and age of the communicants.

An original semiotic model of the linguistic situation was proposed by M. Halliday

Following M. Halliday, we will stick to the following statement: in the socio-semiotic model of language, the social structure is omnipresent in the process of linguistic communication. The situation of communication is conditioned by status-role relations, cultural context and linguistic system.

Let us consider in more detail the components of the communicative context.

Speech prompting is the most important factor in the act of communication, because any act of communication is a speech action for the sake of the impact of the speaker.

In other words, to achieve the communicative goal, the addressee chooses nothing but the text style, which is endowed with a pragmatic function due to the inclusion in the communicative activity, as a successful choice of style increases the effectiveness of speech interaction.

Speech intention is seen as an important communicative factor or the main text-forming, predetermining the selection and combination of language means in accordance with the situation of communication.

The status-role relations determine the hierarchy of the mutual position of the communicants: lower – equal – higher. Accordingly, there are different types of situations – symmetrical and asymmetrical

As for social distance, it is in direct proportion to the degree of intimacy of the relationship between the addressee and the recipient. The more intimate the relationship, the closer the social distance (friendly relations), and vice versa (business relations).

For example: in business correspondence, to express statements with tones of displeasure, indirect rebuke is preferred as a more diplomatic way of communication.

We are at a loss to understand why we have not heard from you

For personal correspondence, in such cases, it is typical to use accusations in the form of a statement, such as:

I remember once a long time ago I had a daughter who used to write me letters, but now I don't know where she is or what she is doing

Like business correspondence, private correspondence is characterized by the observance of the rules of politeness (not to communicate unpleasant things to the person interlocutor, not to impose one's opinion on him or her). In private correspondence, polite requests take the form of a question with the modal verb will, can:

Will you take salt with us on Sunday or Monday night

In business correspondence, would and could prevail, which corresponds to the norms of the language:

Would you please give us the name of the dealer of … area

The environment of communication can be characterized by varying degrees of detail. We will distinguish two types of communication: official and unofficial. The official setting is typical for communication in business circles, while the unofficial type of communication corresponds to a private, intimate setting. Personal interaction prevails in the circle of peers, family, among friends, in leisure hours, as opposed to business in cases such as in a store, bank, at a doctor's appointment, in business correspondence. The decisive point here is how, during business communication, communicants in a sense give up their individuality for a time and act in accordance with their status as customers, salespeople, doctors

The individual in society plays many roles in many social situations, these roles contain norms of behavior, and some of them are norms of language.

The choice of an adequate form in situations is characterized by the presence of variants of expression, is closely related to the concept of norm. The category of norm is interpreted differently in the linguistic literature. The norm is historically changeable, socially and territorially variable. The social variability of the norm depends both on the social stratification of society and on the parameters of the social situation

These types of communicative contexts exist in two variants, depending on the setting of communication – formal and informal.

At the same time, this classification allows us to solve the issue of choosing a given speech variant, which would be adequate to a certain situation of communication.