Performativity category verbalization in prescriptive constructions of a conventionalizing text

Abstract

This study offers an analysis of conventionalizing texts designed to regulate some legal sphere, i.e. they carry a list of declarations of binding nature for several communities. In the texts under consideration, a prescriptively ascertaining character contains immanently attached performative components that are explicated in specific morphosyntactic constructions. A conventionalizing prescriptive text a type of text that is actualized in a polycommunication space and realized not only a communicative action, but self-representation (as peculiar to certain linguocultural community) way of thought-action, which results in a need for the implication of individual overtones performativity in prescriptive-stating constructions. The authors conclude that apart from direct performatives, a conventionalizing text commonly bears morphosyntactic schemes with modal operators, which recover the diachronic meaning of modal verbs (mostly, the verb shall) in the actualization of the noem “beingness”, “presence in reflective reality”, “empirical non-verifiability”. A conventionalizing text is recognized as bearing the dominants of prescribing and “speech-acting” as key markers of the conventionalization or contemporarization of a statement and the action it regulates, which exposes the intentional interconnection and interdependence of the consistency and performativity of each of the statements that have a prescriptive meaning.

Keywords

• performativity
• conventionalizing act
• implication
• prescriptive-stating nature
• modal operators
• morphosyntax