The thesis contains linguopragmatic and linguostylistic analyses of indirect speech acts in the novels of Patrick White, the outstanding Australian writer; his individual literary style is taken into account. Patrick White’s fiction is characterized by a peculiar organization of interlocutors verbal interaction in the dialogues, intentional ambiguity and binary nature of characters’ communicative actions, a wide range of means for expressing implicit meanings and indirect communicative intentions, and linguostylistic peculiarities of speech acts one of which is an indirect speech act. Indirect speech acts are the effective means of indirect implementation of speaker’s meaning and intentions in the characters’ speech. Inference of the indirect proposition and indirect illocution of indirect speech acts indicates the existence of implicature and increases the intentional ambiguity of indirect utterances. Indirect illocution submits hierarchically the direct illocution of indirect speech act and realizes the speaker's desired speech effect on the interlocutor. Indirect speech act is a manifestation of an indirect communicative intention. Indirect communicative intention is understood as a mental state that expresses internal preparation of action, precedes it, stimulates its verbalization in speech act in order to influence the recipient. That is, it implies the presence of the illocutionary and perlocutionary purposes of the speaker to realize indirect speech action.
Intentional ambiguity, implicitness, inferential interpretation, contextuality and anthropocentric specification are main specific features of an indirect speech act. Indirect speech act is realized by means of what is said by the speaker, and by what he s/he means, that is, the implicature is actualized. The inference of implicature involves the constructing logical steps of reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences, taking into account extralinguistic factors of communication in order to understand the indirect communicative intention of indirect speech act.
Indirectness of the utterance is motivated or predetermined by extralinguistic factors of communication. Indirect speech acts depend on context, therefore the linguistic and extra-linguistic context eliminate the intentional ambiguity of an indirect speech act and regulate its correct interpretation. The analysis of microcontext and macrocontexts points to the communicative effectiveness of the indirect speech act.
It is found out that 43% of indirect speech acts are stylistically marked. Linguostylistic means as verbal indicators reveal the pragmatic meaning of indirect speech acts; launch the inference of implicature of indirect utterances; affect the actualization of indirect intentions. Interaction of linguostylistic indicators is detected and described on lexical (49%), syntactical (41%) and graphical (10%) levels.
Dialogues in Patrick White’s novels contain the following indirect speech acts: indirect directives (39%), indirect expressives (28%), indirect constatives (4%), indirect comissives (11%), and indirect quesitives (5%). But the characters do not not limit themselves to verbalization of one communicative intention in indirect way. The combination of two heterogeneous illocutionary purposes, which are expressed indirectly in one indirect speech act, creates a complex syncretic type (13%) of indirect utterance, which complements the classification of indirect speech acts. The following syncretic types are revealed in dialogues: a) constatives → indirect expressives + indirect directives; b) constatives→ indirect directives + indirect commissives; c) commissives → indirect expressives + indirect directives; d) constatives → indirect directives + indirect quesitives.
The thesis touches upon the subject of indirect speech acts relevance in speech situations. The result of successful interpretation of the indirect utterance is the recognition of speaker’s indirect intention. Speaker’s communicative intention determines speech effect of the utterance on the interlocutor in verbal interaction. Verbal or non-verbal response of the interlocutor to an indirect speech act determines its relevance in speech situation. The illocutionary force of indirect speech acts identifies the type of communicative interaction in Patrick White’s novels. The softened and categorical expression of the will, the implementation of the emotional and evaluative force of the positive and negative character are realized by indirect speech acts to determine the cooperative and conflict types of verbal interaction in dialogues.
Key words: indirect speech acts, communicative intention, indirect speech effect, extralinguistic factors of communication, relevance, linguostylistic means.
