POSITIVE EVALUATION AS A MEANS OF MANIPULATION OF AN INTERLOCUTOR (ON THE SAMPLES FROM ENGLISH LITERARY ARTISTIC DISCOURSE)

Abstract

The paper is an attempt of a cognitive pragmatic analysis of communicative situations in which the personages of English literary artistic discourse use utterances of approval, praise, compliment and flattery as the means of manipulative impact upon the listener. Approval is defined as a positive evaluative expressive syncretic speech act, its evaluation object being things, ideas, and phenomena that do not refer to the addressee's sphere of interests. The latter fact makes approval different from the other evaluative speech acts. Approval evaluation theme is that feature of the evaluated objects, which attracts the addresser's attention. Praise is defined as a positive evaluative expressive syncretic speech act, its evaluation theme being the moral and intellectual traits, skills and actions of the interlocutor or a person who is not present during a speech exchange but is praised by the speaker. Compliment is defined as a positive evaluative expressive syncretic speech act, characterized by the overlapping of the addressee and the evaluation object. The main fact about compliment is that it is always exaggerated. The subject of evaluation in a compliment speech act is the hearer's appearance, possessions, and accomplishments. Flattery is defined as a pseudosincere positive evaluative manipulative expressive syncretic speech act, characterized by forethought, by a certain strategy, and also, by its addressee and evaluation object being the same person. Flattery evaluation themes are the addressee's appearance, their moral and intellectual traits, skills, accomplishments, and actions. The speaker flatters the addressee not being motivated by some feelings but wishing to gain some benefit. It has been established that conclusions about the manipulative/non-manipulative character of a certain tactics in each particular case should be arrived at not judging by the analysis of this tactics structure but proceeding from the analysis of the speaker’s communicative intention. A communicative tactics is interpreted as a manipulative one if its speech actions contradict the ethical or communicative standards. It has been found out that manipulative strategy is the major one for flattery speech acts but it can also be used by the addressers of other positive evaluative speech acts.