No abstract

The article examines epistemic words in discourse in order to determine their significance for the formation of communicative strategies of cooperation. Epistemic words (e.g. know, think, perhaps) convey the speaker’s attitude to what is said, express the level of knowledge about what is said, which can vary from confidence to uncertainty. The pragmatics of epistemic words is superimposed on the functioning of dialogic discourse. The main task of pragmatics is to show what the speaker or character wants to convey with his statements, while the communicative-functional direction of speech research aims to plan the speech process depending on the circumstances and conditions of communication and personalities of communicators to achieve communication goals. Communicative strategies and tactics are a method of expressing the intentions of the speaker and influence on the interlocutor. It is common to divide strategies into strategies of cooperation and confrontation. Cooperation strategies are based on the concept of “balance of relations” between communicators, the positive mood between them and their desire to achieve the communicative goal. It is the communicative strategies of cooperation and tactics of cooperative communication that are the subject of research, and the object of research are fragments of dialogic discourse that contain epistemic words. The material for the study were works of modern English literature. In the article for the global strategy of cooperation we single out local strategies for ensuring stable and harmonious communication, prompting, presentation of information, empathy, positive evaluation. It was found that the strategy of stable and harmonious communication is manifested through tactics of seeking consent, confirmation, assurance, promise, justification; prompting strategy includes tactics of instructions, advice, requests; presentation strategy includes the tactics of statement, argumentation, summarizing, assuming, predicting, explaining, clarifying; the strategy of empathy is realized through tactics of encouragement and consolation; the strategy of positive evaluation is implemented through tactics of compliment and praise.

The article considers verbalization of the DOUBT concept by means of epistemic modality, namely epistemically marked words and phrases. The relevance of the study is due to the tendency to study epistemic modality (Palmer F., Halliday M.), epistemic words (Biber D., Wierzbicka A.), phrases of harmonious / disharmonious type (Aijmer K., Hoye L.) and intensifier words (Quirk R.). However, the verbalization of the DOUBT concept by these units has not yet been studied. The object of research is the ways of verbalization of the DOUBT concept by means of epistemic modality, and the subject of research is the meaning of epistemic words and phrases Adv + V / V + Adv, Modal V + Adv, Adv + Adj, Adj + N, where the main words are epistemically marked words, and adverbs and adjectives act as modifiers and intensifiers of meaning. Material of the research ‒ dictionary definitions of epistemic words, word combinations of epistemic words with adverbs-intensifiers in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary, modern English fiction from the 90s of the XX century until now. The research methodology consists in using component analysis of epistemic words to determine words with the “uncertain” seme, lexical-semantic analysis to distinguish verbalizing words of the DOUBT concept, in analyzing the compatibility of epistemic words with intensifier words and pragmatic analysis of epistemic words and phrases. The results of the study are the identification of the semantic features that are inherent in the words verbalizing the concept DOUBT and their grouping by semantic features. Studies of harmonic / disharmonious type phrases allow to refer to the phrases-verbalizers of the DOUBT concept those that contain units that express a weak force of modality (e.g. could possibly), and those whose meaning is modified by intensifier words in the direction of intensification of uncertainty (e.g. will possibly). In the phrases Adv + V / V + Adv, Adv + Adj, Adj + N the influence of the adverb of degree on the meaning of the phrase was traced. The compatibility of epistemic words to denote the DOUBT concept and epistemic words of confidence and probability with amplifiers, emphasizers and downtoners (Quirk R. terms) has been studied. It has been found that the use of epistemic words of confidence and probability with downtoners mitigates the confidence of such a phrase and contributes to its attribution (e.g. hardly believe) to the traditional verbalizers of the DOUBT concept.

У статті досліджуються мовні засоби вираження емоції сумніву в англійській літературі з урахуванням класифікацій вербальних засобів для вираження емоцій. Для вивчення емоцій у тексті приймається емотивний мікротекст-висловлення, достатній для розуміння емоційної ситуації і впізнавання емоції. Вираження сумніву протиставляється його номінації, оскільки така лексика містить та експлікує досліджувану емоцію, тоді як номінація просто називає її.