КОММУНИКАТИВНО-ПРАГМАТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ВСТРЕЧНОГО ВОПРОСА В АНГЛИЙСКОМ ДИАЛОГИЧЕСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ
COMMUNICATIVE-PRAGMATIC PECU¬LIARITIES OF COUNTER-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH DIALOGICAL DISCOURSE

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to single out communicative-pragmatic peculiarities of counter-questions in English dialogical discourse. Dialogue is one of two language communication forms and it has a direct connection (rather than monologue) with people’s behaviour, particular situation when they have to communicate, social context and psychological guidelines. Specific character of human communication as a chain of social interactions can be revealed only in dialogues. Speech can be viewed as an activity which consists of speech acts. The classical theory of speech acts is based on the opposition of the direct and transferred meanings. It was Searle who stated that an indirect speech act implies more information than it conveys because in indirect speech act the meaning of the speaker’s utterance and the meaning of the corresponding sentence may differ in many ways. We believe that counter-questions are indirect speech acts and they are mostly used as a means of avoiding the direct answer to the previous question/remark. We revealed the following communicative types of counter-questions in English dialogical discourse: 1. To save the time to answer the previous question; 2. To change the topic of the conversation; 3. To evade the question; 4. To switch the interlocutor’s attention to something new; 5. Preliminary orientation. The article concludes that the main function of the counter-question is to attract attention, to produce a strong impression and to raise emotional level. It sometimes implies the answer and helps involve the listener into the conversation. The communicative aim of the counter-question depends on the given situation, theme of the dialogue, emotional background of the members of the conversation, their knowledge and communicative intentions.

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