PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION IN THE ENGLISH ADVERTISING TOURIST NARRATIVE

Abstract

The article analyzes interrogative sentences in the English advertising tourist narrative. The study is relevant due to the fact that the interrogative sentence has a significant speech potential. This is a reason for opportunities of research. The purpose of the work is to classify interrogative sentences in English advertising texts on the topic of travel, using certain criteria. The use of interrogative sentences is one of the syntactic distinguishing features of English advertising texts. Interrogative sentences intrigue potential buyers, draw their attention to the advertised product or service. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the question is not studied as a statement taken out of context, on the contrary, the target orientation of interrogative sentences is analyzed. The article reveals the communicative intentions of the questions in the analyzed narrative, and also identifies the types of questions in terms of the communicative intention they carry out. The questions are also compared by the frequency of use in the travel advertising narrative. Materials and methods. 136 questions were selected by the method of continuous sampling from English-language sites devoted to advertisements for travelling. The contextual method, the method of continuous sampling, distributive, pragmatic and quantitative methods were used in the analysis. Results. The results of the study showed that the communicative intentions of the questions in the English-language advertising narrative differ from the questions used in dialogic speech. The analysis of communicative intentions made it possible to distinguish three types of questions. They are guiding questions, the purpose of which is to focus the reader’s attention on something special, to encourage some actions; involving questions, the purpose of which is to attract the reader, to motivate them to read the advertisement; preliminary questions, the purpose of which is to simulate a dialogic speech with an expert in the field of tourism. The guiding question is the most frequent type of question in travel advertising narrative. This is due to the fact that the purpose of the advertisement is to encourage certain actions. Practical implications. The results can be used in further studies of the pragmatic aspects of interrogative sentences in the English-language advertising narrative.

Keywords

• pragmatics
• interrogative sentence
• speech act
• advertising narrative
• polyintentionality