Discursive characteristics of negative manipulative communicative demonstrativeness

Abstract

The article is devoted to the concept definition of negative manipulative communicative demonstrativeness and the identification its implementation means in speech. In the course of the work, the interdisciplinary approach and the method of psycholinguistic analysis of the communicants’ speech output were used. The material for the analysis was the characters’ statements from Russian literature of the XIX century. It is established that the negative manipulative communicative demonstrativeness is a tonality of communication characterized by exaggerated negative self-presentation in the process of self-explanation, accentuation of the dominant destructive emotion, implemented to benefit from the recipient expressed by means of semiotic polymodality. The study shows that the negative manipulative communicative demonstrativeness performs attractive, expressive, influencing, entertaining, pragmatic and conative functions, implements communicative strategies of self-pity, outrage, foolishness, buffoonery, self-abasement and self-flagellation. Linguistic means of expressing this tonality are revealed: metaphorical litota, synecdoche with negative connotation, increasing negative gradation, intensifying particles-phraseological units of religious content, negative adjectives in a diminutive form, emotive interjections with the component «God», prayerful ritual utterances, rhetorical questions, antithesis (self-pity); paradox with negative connotative meaning, enhanced antithesis (shocking); negative hyperbolic tropes, reiteration, exclamation sentences (foolishness); hyperbolic comparison (buffoonery); negative epithets and prosodic units, including a quiet voice, speech with pressure, an elevated tone and frequent pausing (self-abasement); negative nouns, imperative sentences and cliched phrases with negative connotation (self-flagellation). The paralinguistic means of actualizing this tonality are indicated: phonational and kinetic demonstratives. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the unexplored nature of the phenomenon under consideration.

Keywords

• discourse
• negative manipulative demonstrativeness
• communicative tonality
• hyperbolic tropes
• metaphorical litota
• self-deprecation
• negative synecdoche