Kripak I. Strategies and Tactics of Verbal Aggression in Modern English Dialogic Discourse

This research paper describes strategies and tactics of verbal aggressionin communication of English-speaking individuals with a special focus on the variation of speech means and devices conditioned by communicants' gender characteristics. The work analyses verbal aggression in the framework of discourse approach. The empirical data for the research are samples of English dialogic discourse extracted from movie scripts. Verbal aggression of an individual is defined as a purposeful actualization of his/her confrontational intention aimed at harming (with the help of linguistic means) the “I-conception” of the object of aggression, who is usually the addressee; however the individual him/herself or a third party may also be the target of verbal aggression. A set of situational factors forms the discursive situation of aggression, which isa model of a communicative space where the speaker’s aim is confrontational, directed at damaging the "I-conception" of the object of aggression. The discursive situation of aggression comprises the following constituents: the addresser and addressee who are located in a specific place (here) at a specific time (now). The addresser and addressee take on the communicative roles of the speaker and the hearer, which are not strictly bound to individuals, but are taken by them interchangeably. Particular to the discursive situation of aggression are the attributes of its key component – the addresser, whose distinguishing psycho-emotional feature is aggressiveness; his/her motive, or communicative aim, is to cause moral harm to the addressee and the extralinguistic goal is to disharmonize relationships between communicants, using an aggressive utterance as an instrument.