SPECIFICITIES OF THE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF CONTEXT AND ASSESSMENT IN FRENCH EVALUATIVE UTTERANCES

Abstract

The paper is focused on the study of the interconnection of context and evaluative utterances in French. The assessment of different aspects of the world is viewed as a considerable part of human cognitive activities. Considering this, in the paper evaluative utterances are analysed in relation to logical, semantic, pragmatic and communicative properties of evaluation as an element of a linguo-cognitive domain. It is emphasised that the pragmatic analysis is of great significance in the interpretation and explanation of positive or negative polarity of the utterance evaluation. The present article also demonstrates the importance of various semasiological and syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices in the process of highlighting the positive or negative evaluative effect. Following the principles of pragmatic analysis, the author outlines the language means realising positive and negative polarity of the utterance evaluation. The study also proves that the units being neutral at the language level acquire evaluative potential in context. The results obtained confirm the idea that the correlation between the evaluative utterance and its context helps understand the encoded in the evaluative utterance presupposition of communication being the speaker’s communicative intentions associated with his/her epistemic state.

Keywords

• assessment
• evaluative utterance
• context
• pragmatic
• expressive means
• stylistic devices