Karshi state university master of arts department

CHAPTER III. DISCURSIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHRASEOLOGY.
3.1 Phraseology as a sign of illocution
It is well known that the main component in the structure of the pragmatic content of discourse is its illocutionary force. The illocutionary force is what manifests the discourse. This section provides the identification of the role of phraseology and the extent of its participation in the formation and deployment of the aggregate illocutionary force of discourse. This conclusion suggests that in discourse the phraseology is also a signifier, since it is not propositionally deployed and developed. The question then arises, «The sign of what is an phraseology?» We assume that in discourse the phraseology is a sign of illocution, a sign that indicates exactly how the proposition is to be understood in the utterance. Usually the sign is equivalent to an utterance and includes the illocutionary force in its composition. The first paragraph of this section provides an analysis of such utterances. Participation of phraseology in the formation of the illocutionary force of an utterance. In his doctoral dissertation, A.M. Kaplunenko proved that FEs by their semantic-communicative nature are carriers of a certain illocution. This position extends to the object of our study as well. Indeed, the results of our study indicate that in modern discourse, the FI act as carriers of assertive, commissionative and declarative illocutionary forces. Let us illustrate this conclusion with examples: Alfred: Go on with you, Charlie. Now you tell your Uncle Alfred the truth. You can trust an old friend. I’m a man of the world. There is a woman in this. Deny it if you can. Charles: I do. Alfred: You can’t throw dust in Uncle Alfred’s eyes like that. Uncle Alfred wasn’t born yesterday. If you’ve let your business go to old billy-o and you’re leaving your wife and family, it’s for a woman or I’ll eat my hat.
Charles: Eat it then.
This conversation, in which the interlocutors are the nephew and his uncle, was preceded by the following event. Charles, a successful businessman, has run his business and after nineteen years of a happy family life, he suddenly leaves the family. Friends and relatives are at a loss as to the reasons for such an unexpected action. Charles’ uncle, Alfred, is also perplexed; he is greatly worried about his nephew and asks for the truth. Alfred is sure that the cause of all the troubles is a woman. Alfred’s intensional horizon, defined in the described episode by the intensional state of belief in his rightness, necessarily sets the intention to obtain Charles’ confession, which in turn determines Alfred’s verbal behavior.
It should be noted that the sequence of Alfred’s statements constitutes a macro speech act of argumentation, the illocutionary purpose of which is to convince the listener (Charles) of the truth of the thesis expressed by the speaker (Alfred), verbalized by the assertive «There is a woman in this». Charles’ denial of his uncle’s assertive thesis proposition necessitates the strengthening of the illocutionary power of «putting forward the thesis,» which is ensured by Alfred’s use of the FI «I’ll eat my hat» in the last utterance. If we compare this statement, which can be characterized as a declarative thesis, and the assertive thesis expressed by Alfred earlier, we see that the proposition in the declarative is expressed with greater force than in the assertive. It is the use of the FI that turns the proposition: «A takes action because of B» into a statement about a change in the world, a fact which is supported by the speaker’s authority, i.e. into a declarative: «I, Alfred, claim/state that Charles has run things down, is leaving his wife and children for a woman.» This interpretation, it seems to us, allows us to understand why this particular utterance arose here and why this utterance, and not another, arose in this place, in this section of discourse.
It should be noted that as a «solemn declaration and oath of truth and veracity» (OED), this FI forms the declarative illocution of the utterance in the context of argumentation in both the original and contemporary discourse. The declarative statement analyzed above refers to contemporary discourse. Let us consider another utterance with the FI I’ll eat my hat, which dates back to 1837 and goes back to the creator of this expression C. Dickens, i.e. to the original discourse.
“I really am so wholly ignorant of the rules of this place,”returned Mr.Pickwick, “that I do not yet comprehend you. Can I live anywhere else? I thought I could not”.
“Can you!” repeated Mr.Martin with a smile of pity.
“Well, if I knew as little of life as that, I’d eat my hat and swallow the buckle”, said the clerical gentelman solemnly.
“So would I”, added the sporting one
Mr. Pickwick’s appearance in the prison cell was not greeted with any joy by the inmates. Living another man in an already very cramped room was in no way in the plans of the three loafers. So they decide to pay Mr Pickwick off and suggest that he look for another, larger cell. Mr. Pickwick refuses to do so, he is not very familiar with the rules here and still can not understand whether he can settle somewhere else. In order to influence Mr. Pickwick’s decision to find another cell in such a way that he can be assured that it will be beneficial to him to take the action himself, one of the occupants of the cell introduces the proposition «Well, if I knew as little of life as that, I’d eat my hat and swallow the buckle. The FI I’d eat my hat gives this proposition a declarative illocutionary force, due to which the whole statement can be described as a statement, whose semantic structure is as follows: «I declare that I know (prison) life very well», and the implicature has the form: «I assure you that you can settle elsewhere» Declarative speech acts are known to require a certain extra-linguistic status of the speaker. The context of the situation, the discourse in the example under consideration shows us that the author of this statement is a clerical gentleman, the presence of whose authority is necessary to certify the fact of the possibility for Mr. Pickwick to find another cell. Thus, the preservation of the original illocutionary force of this FI is one of the main conditions for its stability and reproducibility. The preservation of the cumulative illocutionary force ensures the stability and reproducibility of the other two FIs: like a shot and like the dickens. In contemporary discourse, these FIs may have the character of assertive and commissive illocution. Let us consider two examples that represent fragments of everyday conversation. In the first example the FI is the bearer of the commissive illocution, and in the second it is the bearer of the assertive illocution.
1. “… and suppose I do, Mary and I get permission to broaden the scope of the research, would you come to work with me?”
“Like a shot”, she said. “ Equal pay for equal work?”.
2. … he changed his tone to one of kindly interest.
“Does your tooth hurt?”
“Like the dickens”.
“So does mine. Coo!”
“Coo here too”
As far as these examples and the analysis of a number of other examples with these FI allow us to judge, in the discourse of domestic conversation they form the commission and assertive illocutionary forces in the conditions of dialogical complementation. By dialogic complementation we understand, following S.A. Aleksandrova, «the complementarity and interpenetrability of the structural units of dialogue on the basis of semantic and pragmatic content»
In a conversation between two young scientists, the protagonists of Wilson Mitchell’s novel Life in the Mist (see Example 1), complementation as a speech act is a directive and a commissive speech act based on certain intentions. An aspiring scientist, Eric Gorin, working in the field of nuclear physics, experiences upheaval, happiness, and anguish in his scientific quest. He opens a laboratory to test a device he has invented and seeks like-minded individuals to conduct his research together, one of whom he considers Mary Carter. Eric admires her talent and, sensing their common scientific interests, invites her to collaborate with him. The indirect directive, uttered by Eric, is based on a request to do research together. Mary enters the conversation by committing a commissioned speech act in order to express her desire and agreement to work with him on an equal footing.
It should be emphasized that complementation is an interpretive process of responding to the original utterance. In other words, it is a speech act, aimed structurally and semantically at the completion of the speaker’s initial replica by the listener, i.e. at achieving the semantic integrity. The semantic integrity of the line-question and line-answer in the minimal dialogue between two patients suffering from a terrible toothache (see Example 2) consists both in the unity of the theme of both lines and in a special synsemantics: neither the line-question nor the line-answer can exist as separate statements, isolated from each other. In the second example «Does your tooth hurt?» is not yet a statement, but only a stimulus coming from one of the interlocutors and prompting the statement. The response, consisting of the FI «Like the dickens», also has no semantic independence in isolation from the question-retort that provoked it. Only by complementing each other does the query-reply become a statement with the proposition of inquiry about the state of affairs in the world, while the reply-reply acquires the complete sense of assertion and acquires assertive illocution.
Now let us consider the role of the FI and the extent of its participation in the deployment of the illocutionary semantics of discourse, which at the local level consists in the fact that FI contribute to the aggregate illocutionary force of the utterance of which they are a part. The study has shown that the role of FI in this contribution is reducible to the role of an enhancer of the illocutionary force of an utterance. In addition, it was found that in a sequence of illocutionary acts that constitute a complex speech act, the FI contribute to the build-up of the illocutionary power of this speech act.