I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

linguistic devices of evasion strategy, pragmatic purpose, understatement, softening, distancing, epistemic modality

The article makes an attempt to specify and compare the complex of Russian and English linguistic devices of understatement, softening, distancing aimed at achieving communicative purposes of the speaker as exemplified in fiction works. Pragmatic approach to the analysis of evasion techniques is applied in the study. The theory of speech behavior strategies in the English environment by Yu. Kuzmenkova serves the basis for the current study. The study is based on the material taken from literary works. It employed the methods of description, comparative analysis, continuous sampling. The work enables to identify some similarities and differences of linguistic devices and pragmatic purposes at the speech level reflecting strategies of behavior of the English and Russian cultures’ representatives in informal communication.  The study suggests that in both languages epistemic modality presented by modal verbs, degree adverbs, interrogative sentences, introductory phrases, verbs in the subjunctive mood contribute to additional mitigation of incentive speech acts. Besides the listed linguistic devices, specific particles and emotionally expressive means and techniques are used to convey different degrees of modality, politeness, indirectness in the Russian language. As opposed to Russian, the techniques of building English incentive speech acts are indicative of regular discrepancy between semantic meaning and pragmatic purpose.

Демьянова Татьяна Валентиновна – старший преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков № 2 Чувашского государственного университета имени И. Н. Ульянова, г. Чебоксары, Россия; e-mail: demyanovatv@mail.ru