Subject’s Roles in the Non-Cooperative Type of Communicative Situation “Talk of Friends”

Abstract

Communicative situation “Talk of Friends” is the only one to represent discourse of friendship. This presupposes that discourse subject’s role is that of FRIEND in its different varieties. However, talk of friends is not always of cooperative nature. In case of non-cooperative character it embraces two subtypes, namely: potentially conflicting and conflicting. In the first case the dialogue participants face a threat to their friendship, in the second case their talk puts an end to it. This article aims at establishing the role infrastructure for both subtypes of the uncooperative type of the communicative situation “Talk of Friends”. Approaching discourse subject as that of mental, communicative and verbal activity results in analyzing each role in the cognitive and communicative aspects and as for the means of its verbal manifestations. The research data analysis gives grounds to argue that the subject roles, proper to the potentially conflicting situation subtype, are friend critic and indifferent friend. The role friend critic is implemented with the communicative aim to reveal the drawbacks of a friend, so that he/she could get rid of them, it is realized by negative evaluative utterances and often combines with the role friend adviser in a dialogue. The role indifferent friend aims at distancing from the other through denying him/her of help, sympathy etc. Non-specific utterances of refusal and disagreement serve to realize this role. In the conflicting non-cooperative situation “Talk of Friends” the role NOT A FRIEND is the only one of the discourse subject, who explicitly/implicitly informs the other about the end of their friendship because of the negative evaluation of the other or himself/herself. Each of the roles is implemented on the basis of the corresponding scenario.