STRATEGY OF EVASION FROM DIRECT RESPONSE IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article focuses on revealing linguistic and stylistic means that realize a strategy of evasion from direct response and its tactics which are used for implementation of the strategy in the English-language discourse. In our research we deal with a strategy as a set of speech actions that aim to realize a speaker’s intentions due to certain tactics which are implemented with the help of some linguistic and stylistic means. The strategy of evasion from direct response used by an addressee is employed to avoid conveying substantial information, weaken potentially conflict interaction, contribute to its normalization. It has been established that for the realization of the strategy of evasion from direct response mostly the tactics of evasion through appeal to a time factor, the tactics of refusal, the tactics of generalization are used. The strategy enables an addressee not to give an immediate response to a question that can be characterized as inappropriate or undesirable. It should be noted that a speaker does not refuse to cooperate or break a “chain” that is created due to a speaker change but he/she follows the rules of harmonic interaction. Within the realization of the strategy of evasion from direct response the tactics of evasion through appeal to a time factor aims at referring to time circumstances as an excuse that makes giving a reply by an addressee impossible. In this case there is no destruction for positive tone of communication. The tactics of refusal is considered to be evasion from direct response due to explicit refusal with its rationale that provides softening of categoricity of a statement. The tactics of generalization is used to hide an addressee’s specific reply that has to include genuine information. The above tactics has no informational value and it does not represent a speaker’s point of view. The cited discursive fragments in this paper have exposed an ability of a broad range of the linguistic and stylistic means to realize the strategy of evasion from direct response. Among the means there are adverbs of time, structures of future tenses, linking words, negative structures, indefinite pronouns, hyperbole, components of non-verbal communication, imperatives that encourage and express a proposal for a joint action.