An attempt of a systematic approach to the typology of supportive communicative units

Abstract

In the article the author explains the necessity to work out a systematic approach to the description of communicative units of real life communication. The article presents an attempt to solve the problem of classifying the units belonging to the secondary communication level. Based on the previously suggested principles and methods of identifying communicative discourse units, the author provides definitions of primary and secondary (supportive) units. Also, the author defi nes typological structural, semantic and functional properties of supportive communicative units, analyzes typological properties of three supportive units: discourse markers, dialogue reaction markers and dialogue repetitions, and gives definitions of these units which correlate with the current state in modern linguistics. The functional and quantitative analysis of three spheres of communication (colloquial, media and spoken academic discourses) shows the balance of primary and secondary units in these spoken discourses. It is proved that all three spoken discourses demonstrate a specific level of the interaction of informative, regulative and organizational “vectors of communication” which can be regarded as a certain functional-pragmatic characteristic of the discourse. Spoken academic discourse demonstrates the highest proportion of supportive communicative units. Colloquial discourse uses mainly dialogue reaction markers and dialogue repetitions, media discourse – discourse markers and dialogue reaction markers, academic discourse – discourse markers. Taking into consideration the modern situation of studying supportive units the author singles out several problematic issues and outlines the prospects of their studying: namely, making up intentional-communicative dictionaries of Russian discourse, using theoretical and practical research results for the communication of a human being with artificial intelligence. In the conclusion the author emphasizes the role of supportive units as means of increasing communication efficiency and claims the importance of dealing with theoretical and methodological issues of supportive units’ usage within linguistic ecology. 

Keywords

• communication
• supportive system
• primary units
• secondary units
• typology
• definition
• discourse markers
• reaction phrases
• dialogue repetitions
• linguistic ecology
• communication risks