PRAGMATIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SPEECH ACTS IN OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

Abstract

In the context of present international and intercultural communication, the official communication plays a significant part since the settlement of all political, economical and social problems depends upon their appropriate and clear comprehension and interpretation. Many linguistic scholars along with other specialists express their interest to the official discourse as a scope of interdisciplinary research.

This paper presents the characteristics of speech acts of various communicative and semantic categories and their actualization in English-language documents, namely resolutions and recommendations of Parliamentary Assembly of European Council. In the scope of our research the main terms, namely pragmatic meaning, communicative intention, speech acts were given definitions. Besides, the consideration was given to the principal elements that create communicative situation, these elements are the following: addresser, addressee, communicative intention and communicative tasks. Subject to the results of the research, pragmatic meaning is realized within the category of address as well as speech acts of different communicative and semantic groups that were thoroughly studied. The most prevalent category of pragmatic meaning realization is the category of speech acts including vocatives, representatives, expressives, exercitives and directives with their pragmatically relevant units expressing pragmatic meaning. A great attention was also paid to the functioning and realization of aforementioned speech acts in the contexts of resolutions and recommendations of Parliamentary Assembly.