Category of politeness: Russian imperative speech clichés in dia­logue

Abstract

This study identifies and characterises a class of lexical units — imperative speech cli­chés, exemplified by expressions such as krepis'! [hold on!], prekrati! [stop it!] or ne lez' [back off!]. It defines the concept of imperative speech clichés and investigates the role of pragmati­cisation in their formation. The general properties of imperative clichés are described: most are either never employed with the negative particle ne [not] or are utilised exclusively with this particle. In speech communication, they function as reactions-impulses, i. e. the addresser uses one when reacting to the addressee's previous remark or their behaviour, simultaneously en­couraging the addressee to perform an action or refrain from it. A significant part of impera­tive cliches, especially reactions-impulses, are formed with perfective verbs. The use and func­tioning of imperative clichés in speech are central topics in describing the category of polite­ness, particularly in impolite and anti-polite communication. This study aims to examine the functioning of imperative speech clichés in terms of the category of politeness. The data used in the research consisted of categorical appeals used in speech acts to interrupt or prohibit contact. A collection of examples from the Russian Na­tional Corpus — about a hundred tokens — was compiled to this end. The method of lexico­graphic description was employed to prepare a test article for the otstan'! [leave me alone!] speech cliché. Linguistic description and dictionary representation of imperative speech cli­chés are central to a comprehensive description of the category of politeness category.

Keywords

• imperative speech clichés
• non/anti/politeness category
• pragmaticisation
• speech communication
• lexicographic description