Бейсен Ж. Б.,Таджибаева А.А.

Региональный социально – инновационный университет

Expressing speech act of agreement and disagreement on different language levels

The phenomena of agreement and disagreement have been captivating researchers in linguistics for several decades. Disagreements are complex and entail the

In the framework of Speech Act Theory, Sornig defines speech act of disagreement as a reaction act to an act that precedes it; in other words, it requires a prior utterance from an interlocutor (Sornig 1977). Overall, taking into consideration all the views and studies, the following definition of disagreement is suggested: “Disagreement is a speech act expressing the speaker’s opinion or belief, whose illocutionary force is partly or fully inconsistent with that of the previous speaker’s utterance. In other words, agreement is generally perceived as the desirable, preferred option (Pomerantz 1984) while disagreement is regarded as its negative, undesirable counterpart”.

At this point, it is necessary to explicate the difference between agreement and disagreement speech acts. According to some scholars, there are four major differences. Firstly, agreement components are normally occupy an entire agreement turn, whereas disagreements are often prefaced with a hesitation, verbal pause etc. Secondly, agreements are normally accomplished with explicitly stated agreement components, while disagreements may be accomplished with a variety of forms, ranging from stated (explicit) disagreements to unstated (implicit or implied) disagreements. Thirdly, agreements are performed with as little gap as possible between the completion of the first turn and the beginning of the second, whereas disagreements are frequently delayed within a turn or over a series of turns. Fourthly, disagreements may be unstated, and may be marked only by the absence of forthcoming agreements or by gaps, requests for clarification, and so on.

Showing agreement and disagreement to others’ opinions is an important speech act; thus it can be expressed both by verbal and nonverbal language. Its linguistic realization can be observed on all language levels: lexical, grammatical (morphological and syntactical), and phraseological levels.

Agreement and disagreement as a type of speech act in the dialogic speech can be expressed differently in all language levels. The answer-reaction can be verbal and non verbal, implicit and explicit depending on pragmatic meaning of agreement and other sociolinguistic, pragmatic and cultural factors. Specifically, the majority examples of dialogic speech reveal that grammatical and lexical means of expressing agreement prevail on other language means.

Grammatical means of expressing agreement can be divided into morphological and syntactical. Morphological means include the usage of affixes expressing agreement. On syntactical level agreement is expressed with the help of formal grammatical structures – coherent sentences. It can be synonymic syntactic structures to reply, repeating main idea and at the same time confirming it. This type of sentence is called reprise – repetition of morphemes, words and sentences: It’s a very exciting book! – Yeah, very exciting!

Grammatical means expressing agreement is united sentence models and structures, with the help of which speaker in the process of communication expresses his agreement towards certain situation. Yes, I do; I will, I had to, I can are widespread grammatical forms expressing agreement. Usage of following structures to express speech act of agreement can be observed in the following examples:

- Oh, so she did come?

- She did, and a sweet quiet thing she is.

Person agrees with the question about girl’s arrival. Agreement is expressed on grammatical level with the help of “she did”. Except this grammatical structure, there is a positive describing characteristic of that girl, which intensifies effect of the answer.

- I mean, spouse I pick up my rabbits an’ go off somewhere an’ eat ‘em. See?

- I see, said Casy.

Communicant gives positive answer agreeing with the interlocutor’s opinion. Agreement is expressed with grammatical unit “I see”.

- Didn’t John never have no family?

- Well, yes, he did, an’ that’ll show you the kind a fell he is-set in his way.

There is negation in the question, but it sounds as doubt, that is why answer is agreement (well, yes, he did).

- Well, said Pa, we sold all the stuff at our place, an’ the whole bunch of us copped cotton, even Grandpa

- Sure did, said Grandpa.

In the given example there is agreement with assertion “sure did”.

Alongside with grammatical means of expressing agreement, it can also be expressed on lexical level. In English the most widespread lexical units of expressing agreement are considered affirmative communicatives – yes and its informal spoken form – yeah. What is more, there are adverbs and adjectives with positive semantics – right, of course, sure, no doubt, also, too, true. To intensify expression can be used such intensifiers as very, certainly, exactly, absolutely, totally, definitely. Among lexical means of expressing agreement, there are lexical structures as well: so do I, I agree with you, tell me about it!, I side with you, you have a point here, there is no doubt about it, I’m of the same opinion, I couldn’t agree with you more, that’s exactly how I feel and etc.

Literature :

1. http://elearningindustry.com