Speech Act Characteristics of English Internet Forums

Abstract

Speech acts of different types, typical for texts of Internet forums, are characterized. The novelty of the work is seen in the material of the study: Internet discourse appeared and became the subject of research relatively recently, and many of its genres have not yet been fully explored, especially since this type of discourse is in constant development and is undergoing changes. The relevance of the work is determined by the fact that it is carried out in the sphere of pragmalinguistics. It is concluded that the high frequency of directive speech acts is conditioned by the genre of Internet forum. The authors show that these texts quite often contain expressives. It is revealed that representatives as well as interrogatives make up a small percentage of the total number of speech acts in the material and can be seen mostly in the initial posts. Commissives and declarations are not present in the sample of this study, from which it is concluded that they are present in Internet forums in isolated cases. The author studies in more detail the decision-making speech acts as the most widespread in the studied material, analyzes the degree of their categoricity, as well as language means that soften the tone of decision-making speech acts. Explicit and implicit directives vary.

Keywords

• pragmalinguistics
• theory of speech acts
• directives
• internet discourse
• the language of internet forums