FRAME STRUCTURE OF ETIQUETTE SITUATIONS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the cognitive approach of studying speech etiquette and etiquette situations in particular. Cognitive science interprets speech etiquette as a means of exchanging information about certain culture in order to create a holistic picture of it and knowledge of communicants as well. The article is focused on the peculiarities of the actualization of cognitive structures in a socially acceptable verbal expression within speech etiquette.

Each participant of communication is able to realize and interpret any speech act, based on the appropriate situational mental model in his mind. Knowledge of speech etiquette and the situation of its use are organized into mental structures in the form of models of the situation, frames, scripts, scenarios, routines, that is, alleged patterns of behavior that develop in the process of interaction between people and culture. The approaches to frame analysis of etiquette situations are considered in the article. The two-level nature of frame analysis of etiquette situations is due to the need for a static and dynamic representation of the frame.

The frame of etiquette situation, as a multilayered mental formation, helps to determine the features of its hierarchically ordered structure. Building a frame requires determination of general categories that make up the etiquette situation and relationship between them. Each frame contains information: how to use it, how to act within it, how to act if the expectations from the frame implementation do not come true. According to the situation frames that contain certain ideas about the values of culture and communication are filled with verbal and non-verbal expressions and reproduced in a certain sequence. Thus, a frame-script is created and combines mental and verbal areas in the process of communication.

The frame-script is considered as a dynamic cognitive formation, which allows identifying the general and the specific in the actualization of etiquette situations within a particular culture.