FEATURES OF USING PERFORMATIVES WITH ILLOCUTIVE FORCE OF ACCUSATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of performative accusation utterances in modern German fiction discourse. The purpose is to investigate the lexical and syntactic means of expressing performative accusation and pragmatic factors of this communicative situation. The following research methods have been employed in the paper: linguistic observation, pragmatic interpretation, descriptive method, discourse analysis, structural modeling. The accusation utterances, presented in German by a performative formula, which provides a statement with a predicate, expressed by the verbs “beschuldigen (j-n + G.)”, “anklagen (j-n + G.)”, which contain in its lexical semantics the seme “accusation”. The performative formula (S + P (beschuldigen Präs) + Obj.) can appear in various constructions in the hidden performatives, in which the basic meaning of a full verb is modified. Such performatives are implicit in the accusation and are realized with the phrases “j-m die Schuld geben”, “j-m etw. zur Last legen”, “schuld sein (an D.)”, “die Schuld (an etw.) tragen”, the lexical meaning of which directly indicates the accusation of the addressee. There are 5 main syntactic models of performative accusation: S + P (beschuldigen Präs) + Obj.; S + P (sein Präs + schuld).; S + P (sein Präs + schuld ) + NS.; S + P (tragen Präs) + Schuld.; S + P (V Präs / Perf) + durch + (Poss. Pron) Schuld. The following significant pragmatic factors of the communicative situation that influence the choice of language forms of accusation utterances, are identified: symmetrical / asymmetric social status relations between communicators (addressee status higher / lower / equal status); official and business / friendly and familiar social distance and gender factor. The quantitative variability of the use of performative accusation utterances (depending on social status relations and the social distance between communicators) was analyzed and it was found out that the implementation of performative accusation utterances is possible only in a limited communicative situation under certain conditions.