REGULATORY FUNCTION OF EMPATHIC UTTERANCES IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CHILDREN’S CINEMA DISCOURSE: SYNERGETIC ASPECT

Abstract

The article provides insights into the regulative function of emphatic utterances realized in the English-language children’s cinema discourse. This discourse is viewed both as cognitive-communicative activity of young children and as that addressed to children. The latter includes traditional forms such as fairy tales, children’s verses, etc. In modern times cinema discourse for children, mainly cartoons, are gaining popularity. The multimodal nature of cartoons makes it easier for children to perceive them. Cartoons are not only entertaining, they are also an important ingredient of children’s socialization, teaching the young viewers the norms and values of their native culture. Cartoons are often innovative artistic creations which do not follow the fairy tale tradition. This is the case with the cartoon under study – Inside Out – telling the story of a young girl’s overcoming the psychological problems of moving to a new place through communication with her parents and personificated emotions, which involves a lot of empathy. The study of emphatic utterances of this cartoon heroes concludes the following: (1) empathy is part of cooperative behavior proper to the English language culture, it corresponds to the norms of communication that society requires from an individual; the acquisition of these norms is a part of socialization; (2) the regulatory function of emphatic utterances in children’s cinema discourse is of synergetic nature: they regulate the heroes interpersonal relations and at the same time influence children cognitive-communicative activity providing them with the models of emphatic speech behavior; (3) the regulatory function of emphatic utterances presents itself through the potential of communicative-pragmatic characteristics of these utterances; this potential includes speech acts expressives, representatives, directives and commisives; (4) the implementation of the regulatory function becomes possible through organizing the communicative-pragmatic potential of emphatic utterances into two models – scenarios that correspond to the emphatic senses of sharing and caring.