Two: Interpretation of Meaning across Discourses

Three The Strategic Structure of the English- Language Compliment Discourse: A Tentative Gender-Sensitive Model

Oleg A. Alimuradov, Natalia S. Alimuradova and Maria A. Karatyshova

Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University, Russia

Abstract

Compliment discourse is a verbally constructed environment, where the concept of BEAUTY is represented by different linguistic means and with the help of various pragmatic strategies and tactics. Compliment discourse is gender-specific and strategically and tactically structured from the viewpoint of both its generation and interpretation. The peculiarities of compliment discourse production and processing are determined by the cognitive characteristics of the communicants who fulfil definite gender roles, which naturally brings about distinctions in the strategies and tactics of their discourse activity. The paper presents a research that reconstructs the strategic and tactical structure of compliment discourse and puts all the elicited discourse strategies into a gender-sensitive prospective with respect to their explicit and implicit goals, linguistic implementation and perlocutionary effect.