Sociolinguistic parameters of communication.

The speech etiquette represents the set of verbal forms of courtesy, politeness that is, what we simply cannot do without. By speech etiquette we understand the rules of speech behavior produced by the society, which are obligatory for the members of the society, which are nationally specific, steadily fixed in the speech formulas, but at the same time they are historically changeable.

N.I. Formanovskaya gives the following definition of the speech behavior. The speech behavior is a wide sphere of the units of language and speech, which expresses verbally the etiquette of behavior, and gives us those language values which have been collected in each society for the expression of the attitude to people [Формановская 1989].

Participants of different social groups are differentiated from the point of view of constant social attributes: the age (children, youth, average, senior generation), the social belonging from the point of view of an occupation (the intellectual, a working man, the peasant), an educational level (the educated person of the literary language, the uneducated person of popular speech), from the point of view of residence (in the city or in a village) etc. What people understand by speech etiquette is used in our speech daily and repeatedly. Perhaps, they are the most common expressions: we address to someone, we welcome someone, we say goodbye to people, we thank someone, we apologize, we surprise.

The respectfulness to another person, the politeness and goodwill help to express the speech etiquette; and it forms the culture of our behavior. It is not only the rules, which we follow at table of paying a visit, in general they the norms of our relations. By means of such rules acquired from childhood we regulate our interactions with other people. In the process of communication we establish or find out such relations as “grown-up-junior-peer”.

If communicants have the same position or age, the situation appears to be symmetric, if they differ according to essential attributes (the grown up-the younger, i.e. they are of different age, they have different social standing, for example, the teacher-pupil, the chief-subordinate) the situation appears to be asymmetric. In such situations “straightening” of communicants takes place, as though they adapt to each other [Формановская 1989].

Speech etiquette is realized in the condition of contact position of communicants and that causes the oral, spontaneous speech embodied mainly in the dialogue form.

It is in the dialogical speech – thus basic sphere of concrete use of units of speech etiquette – that one of its most important specialized functions – contact or phatic is realized.

From formal and grammatical point of view the units of speech etiquette are extremely various. There are brief verbose linguistic marks, which by virtue of situational conditionality and functional and semantic nature are actualized and obtain some predicative properties. The syntactic structure of the formula of surprise “you took me by surprise” can be full or elliptical depending on the stylistic characteristics.

However, despite the wide structural and semantic and stylistic variety these standardized, sample stereotypes can extend due to the different intensifiers and other modifiers.

However, the units of speech etiquette represent itself as “the ready formulas” not only from the point of view of their morphological and syntactic structure, but also from the point of view of their lexical fullness. These are the regulated speech stereotypes which are regularly reproduced in speech during the social influence of partners in the process of communication.

The semantic structures of units of speech etiquette are united by the contents in separate lexical sets. Each group is traditionally fixed with the certain, socially caused speech situation. A synonymic set of units of speech etiquette, which makes the thematic set is characterized by stylistic differentiation of synonyms. At the same time it is united by the invariant meaning which is presented in each unit included in a synonymic line and which, depending on the sociological and psychological factors, turns into this or that concrete variant in each concrete act of speech. Expressing the theme of “event”, rather than the theme of message, the units of speech etiquette serve some kind of a background and preparation in order to transfer the subsequent basic contents of the utterance which can be expressed in the form of declarative, interrogative and incentive offer, When the units of speech etiquette do not have such basic information, their use in the dialogue is limited by phatic function.

Social information concerning the speaker and the listener is expressed in the semantic structure of the units of speech etiquette, by this information one should understand such components of the speech situation, as the social status of communicants, their social roles in the communication, the condition of the speech act. Thus, one of the basic distinctive features of the units of speech etiquette is their social conditionality; they have sociolinguistic implications.

Emphasizing this feature of the units of speech etiquette, Bally wrote, that “speech etiquette has the social symbol” [Балли 1961:238].

Modern Russian linguistics investigates the influence of social factors over the system of language and its function in the process of communication, it also underlines the nature of speech etiquette and its units and their high sensitivity to different sociological factors [Формановская 1982:54].

On the part of the contents, it is possible to characterize the speech etiquette as socially determined universal, inherent in polyglot groups and is presented as the system of norms of “speech behavior”. On the part of expression, however, speech etiquette has the national and specific character in each concrete language caused by distinctions in national and cultural aspect. The national feature of speech etiquette lays in the fact that the quantity and quality of the social situations reflected by the formulas of etiquette, in various language groups can not coincide.

Moreover, some units of speech etiquette in one language may have no equivalents in other language. [Швейцер, Никольский 1978:72].

Verbally, the speaker with all their social and demographic features and the character of role relations between them are put under the rigid social control when choosing one unit of speech etiquette as the most appropriate.

Prescribed by the society and caused by a concrete situation, the sample of speech behaviour sharply limits an opportunity of alternative variants and that makes their occurrence in the speech predicted. The choice of socially acceptable formulas of speech etiquette, correlated with the character of role relations of communicants, is usually expressed in the stylistic differentiation of speech.

The character of relationship between communicants and the situation of intercourse from the point of view of formal/informal situation influence the characteristic of the expression of speech etiquette, which is connected with the choice of words. That is why the expressions of the speech etiquette can be characterized as stylistically reduced, on the one hand and as stylistically intensified on the other hand. There are also plenty of neutral expressions of speech etiquette.

Thus, the stylistic differentiation of the expressions of speech etiquette can be presented on the expressive and stylistic scale. Synonymic sets of expressions also include stylistic synonyms. So, stylistically marked expressions of speech etiquette are provided by formal and informal situations of speech, the character of relationship between the communicants and their belonging to different social groups.

Informal style is characterized by the use of special colloquial words, slang.

According to this parameter, the linguistic units in formal style are also considerably different.

The basic features of the speech situation which leave traces on the formal style are the following: orientation of the subject of speech on the building of an utterance in formal style, formal situation, “seriousness” of the theme and formal relationship between communicants.

The linguistic form of informal style is defined by the informal character of the same extralinguistic factors.

The stated above features of different situations show that the speaker must choose definite linguistic means, which are “the internal sign” of the given style or its “stylistic feature”.

Formality is a stylistic feature, which reveals itself on the lexical level in the use of “book” lexicon, absence of colloquial words. Informal style reveals itself on the grammatical level as morphological and syntactical reduction and it is the result of a large number of common persuasions and elements of life experience.

Until formal style, informal style is characterized by the manifestation of personal interest, personal participation of a speaker and it is expressed in the wide use of emotionally coloured linguistic means.

It is typical for formal style to display accuracy of the information. And informal style is characterized by emphasizing the vague of the information.

The basic feature of the situations of informal style is that the speaker does not pay much attention to the linguistic form of the utterance and concerning this, one should underline that it should not be understood as the systemic character of the linguistic phenomena which are caused by extralinguistic factors.

Concerning the stated above, it is possible to conclude that the ability to build stylistically correct utterances does not mean only the possession of concrete neutral and stylistically colored linguistic means but it also means 1) the knowledge of the principle according to which one chooses linguistic units; 2) the acquaintance with “the internal elements” of styles, their stylistic features which are presented in the speech by means of the concrete lexicon and grammatical means.

Being stylistically marked, they include such social information, which reflects the character of relationship of communicants.

The typological analysis of the units of speech etiquette function in various cultural and social language groups, which shows, that it is important to know the ethical rules, which regulate people’s “speech behavior”. It is through the speech activity that these social factors influence the language, and only through its means they are reflected in language as such [Леонтьев 1969:29].