DISCOURSE OF BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS. VESTIMENTARY ITEMS AS MEANS OF DOING FACE-THREATENING ACTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14529/ling260106Keywords:
back-handed compliment, impoliteness, rapport, vestimentary itemsAbstract
The article analyses discoursive mechanisms of delivering back-handed compliments with the focus on vestimentary items as means of performing face-threatening illocution. The corpus includes examples retrieved from modern English TV series that fall into the genre of sitcoms and thus most closely reflect patterns of natural discourse. It is emphasised that speakers employ implicit impoliteness strategies based on the application of implicatures to carry out malicious compliments. The aim of delivering such compliments is to challenge or neglect rapport, i.e. in a default sense, non-cooperative communicative behaviour. As speakers commonly employ inherently polite or non-conventional language means whose nature is either not second-guessed or ambivalent, hearers often fail to repel the verbal attack di rected at them. In conclusion it is stressed that it is best to employ interpretative method of analysis to suchlike corpus as it helps to establish genuine illocutionary goals pursued by speakers.References
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