Bulkina A. Dialogic Love Discourse in the works of Thomas Hardy (Pragmatic and Cognitive Aspects).

The thesis investigates pragmatic and cognitive peculiarities of dialogic love discourse in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Dialogue as an integral compositional part of the fictional text, serves as the means of achieving the author's intention, and promotes aesthetic, plot-formational and characterizing functions. Social and historical context of Thomas Hardy's novels (edge of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, epistemological crisis of transition from traditional Victorian values to the new modern worldviews) presents considerable interest within the pragmatic-cognitive analysis of the communicative interaction. Chapter 1 outlines the basic approaches to the study of dialogue within linguistic research. It describes the methodology of the given research and presents the results of the quantitative analysis of dialogical interactions in the novels of the writer and justifies the status of dialogic love discourse as the most representative type of the dialogic discourse in Thomas Hardy's works. It proposes the division of the continuum of dialogic love discourse on the basis of pragmatic and cognitive criteria in two types: harmonious and conflictual, as well as further division according to the stages of love relationships: 1) initiation, 2) intensification and stabilization and 3) further development. Chapter 2 addresses the topics of pragmatic and cognitive parameters of the representative harmonious speech genres of the dialogic love discourse - "acquaintance" and "marriage proposal". It defines phatic intention and intention of reducing social distance as the leading communicative intentions of the speech genre "acquaintance". It gives the analysis of the motives of phatic intention and basic ways of establishing contact in love communication, as well as strategies and tactics that promote the realization of the intention of reducing social distance within the dialogic speech genre "acquaintance" in the love discourse. The speech genre "marriage proposal" is defined as argumentative and ritual. The ritualization parameters of the given speech genre in rigid and soft formalizations are analyzed. Close attention is given to the analysis of the strategies and tactics that promote argumentativeness of the dialogic speech genre "marriage proposal".