The thesis reveals an extensive research into the issue of the communicative situation of accusation/excuse in the English literary texts for children. It is based on the theoretical and methodological foundations of the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistic studies enhanced by the communicative and pragmatic approach. Due to the topicality of the research the methodology integrates approaches and principles of various fields and theories of linguistic studies: sociolinguistics, communicative linguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, theory of speech acts, etc. The accusation and excuse united by the stimulus-response intentional relationship are considered in a dialogical unity, because, on the one hand, they belong to social schemes of speech interaction, which are based on the social norms and principles of communication, and, on the other hand, they are implemented in a dialogue aiming at regulating interpersonal relationships in conflict interaction. The communicative situation of accusation/excuse is analyzed as a sequence of the contrary communicative reactions one of which is aimed at conflict interaction (accusation), the other one – conflict regulation (excuse). Therefore, the communicative situation of accusation/excuse is a harmonizing type of conflict interaction because, revealing distinct features of non-cooperative interaction, the participants try to harmonize communication and move to cooperative interaction. In the communicative situation of accusation/excuse speakers try to improve their communicative status by increasing their own or decreasing their opponents’. If the opponent tends to cooperative communication, he chooses excuse as a way of increasing his own communicative status as well as maintaining the status of the speaker. If he does not intend to cooperate he chooses accusation in response or refuses to provide any excuse which decreases the speaker’s communicative status.
Age as a social parameter of communication strongly influences the choice of verbal means, communicative strategies and tactics. Every age group has its own range of these tools. Children use simpler verbal structures, fewer strategies and tactics than adults. In opposition “child” – “adult” a child is a marked category which has a more dependant status and less communicative and behavioural freedom. Accusation and excuse are the communicative tactics implemented in the English fiction texts for children both directly and indirectly, in explicit and implicit ways. Pragmatic context analysis applies the approach offered by T.A. van Dijk and the analysis of the communicative situation performed by F. S. Batsevych. According to that, two types of context are differentiated: context 1 (before the implementation of accusation tactics) and context 2 (after implementation of accusation tactics). Accusation tactics in the English fiction texts for children is implemented directly (33%) and indirectly (67%). The most common tactics is “You are to blame” (45,7%) whereas the least common – “Your guilt is proven” (5,8%). Nine explicit accusation tactics realized indirectly are differentiated according to four parameters. The most frequent among them is the tactics “Why have you done that?” – 22,7%, the least frequent – “You influenced me” (3%). Implicit accusation tactics based on the operation of the four categories of the Cooperative Principle are not common in the English fiction texts for children: the most frequent is the tactics which exploits the Category of Relation – 43,1%.
Excuse consists of two parts: confess/not confess one’s guilt and justify oneself. Therefore, there are nine excuse-agreement (65,7%) and three excuse-disagreement (34,3%) tactics. Excuse intention is always verbal but cannot be expressed by conventional means.
The illocutionary force of accusation and excuse can be intensified or weakened by lexical means at the level of words and methods at the level of sentences. The intensification of the illocutionary force occurs when the speaker seeks to prove that their statement is true, and the weakening of the illocutionary force makes an expression less categorical. The range and choice of the accusation and excuse tactics depend on the configuration of the participants. The communicants’ status distance influences the frequency of excuse in response to accusation. In the English fiction texts for children accusation and excuse as discursive acts are composed of the following direct and indirect speech acts: representatives, directives, commissives and expressives. Key words: communicative situation of accusation/excuse, conflict interaction, communicative tactics, illocutionary force, discursive act, speech act.
