Pragmalinguistic Aspect of Interrogative Speech Acts in Discourse of “Rig Veda”

Abstract

The interrogative speech acts presented in the linguistic material of the “Rig Veda” — one of the most ancient and culturally significant works that were a manifestation of ritual and mythological discourse, are researched. The language of Vedic texts is considered from the standpoint of the functional approach as a pragmatic system for which such communicative characteristics as intentions and illocutionary power of utterances are relevant. The system of norms and ideas that govern speech activity in the Vedic ritual interaction is taken into account. It has been proven that interrogative speech acts are one of the most important pragmatic elements of this type of discourse. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that all the interrogative structures of the monument extracted as a result of a continuous sampling are studied for the first time from the point of view of pragmatics, taking into account communicative intentions. Various types of questions are described and analyzed, including interrogative constants, interrogative directives, including questions with secondary illocution, as well as proper interrogative sentences. The author comes to the conclusion that, in addition to non-specific pragmatics for a given linguistic material, interrogative sentences in the text of the Rig Veda contribute to the realization of the magic-incantatory function of speech. The results are valuable both for studying the named type of discourse and for clarifying the understanding of the text of the monument and Vedic culture as a whole.

Keywords

• discourse
• pragmatics
• speech act
• illocution
• communicative intentions