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BASIC MECHANISM OF VERBAL INTERACTION

Kurbakova, S.

Abstract

Contemporary studies in linguistics and psychology have proved that verbal communication should be considered an interaction of people who are determined to cooperate. Life in society makes a person use words (of a native or foreign language) to communicate with other people in order to achieve his /her aims and satisfy his/ her needs. In short, a person handles his/her interlocutors, affecting their behavior, way of thinking, activity. On the other hand, social interaction obliges a person to correlate his/her speech with communicative situation which is characterized primarily by such parameters as agent(s), space and time. We call these parameters deictic coordinates. They form a framework of a verbal communication by correlating speech with relevant agents, space and time. Our comparative analysis of grammar of different languages has discovered that this organization of verbal interaction has a universal nature, but engages specific means in different languages. It enables to enrich the traditional usage of the term of deixis in the theory of indication with explanation of its motives and functions in verbal communication. We suggest deixis should be interpreted as a linguistic mechanism of correlation between speech, subjective motivation and objective situation where and when agents act or plan their actions. Thus who, where and when shall constitute a backbone of discourse. By implementing this mechanism in speech a person reflects the objective system of interaction but subjectively, in accordance with his/ her personal concepts of agent (s) (his/ her character, motivation, activity and proposed reaction to discourse). Moreover, the research has demonstrated national peculiarities of deictic words. In different languages we can observe different means of indication of agent(s), place and time of verbal communication. Most languages have special classes of deictic words (i.e. nouns and pronouns indicate agent(s), grammatical forms of verbs and corresponding adverbs indicate time, nouns with propositions and corresponding adverbs indicate space. Evidently, it is reasonable enough to determine the deictic potential and deictic scale of words in every language. The research proves interactive nature of verbal communication and promotes further studies of its functional aspects.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B13/S3.018

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