Information on the thesis

The given thesis amounts to a comprehensive study of the compliment as a speech
act as regards its language pragmatics and evolution in the texts of German drama written
during the 18^th-20^th cc. It proceeds from the main principles of speech acts theory as well
as  the  ideas  of  historical  pragmatics  and  diachronic  studies  in  language  culture.  The
compliment is treated as a many-faceted emotionally loaded phatic speech act that serves
the speaker to express his sensual state and positively assess the inner world, appearance,
achievements, skills or eventually property of the addressee with the purpose of arising the
latter’s kind attitude. It can also serve as a means of establishing solidarity and balance in
communication  or ultimately  induce  the addressee to  (non-)verbally  react to the uttered
compliment through positive, negative or ambivalent responses. The context/background
knowledge of both the speaker and the addressee as well as certain interactive, situational
or  logical  presuppositions  and  communicative  purpose  as  a  prerequisite  for  sincerity,
pragmatic  correctness  and  kind  predisposition  towards  the  recipient  are  taken  for  the
necessary conditions of the compliment to be felicitously paid.  The emotions of the speaker as well as his feelings tend to get manifested in his
communicative intentions. These can serve the speaker to not only express emotions or
establish solidarity and communicative equilibrium, but also to affect the addressee and
meet the expectations of conventional politeness. The compliment’s potentials get realized
in its pragmatic functions (senses) which could be a manifestation of solidarity, adoration,
respect, recognition, encouragement, inducement, impetus and assuaging criticism. As a
speech act it can be uttered to flirt or even seduce the recipient. It could also figure as a
starter of the conversation, a greeting phrase, an expression of gratitude, a mild formula of
refusal, admission of amorousness or even confession of being in love, an apologetic or
uncontumely cue.
A  look  into  the  evolution  of  the  thematic-sense  peculiarities  of  the  compliment
testified to a tangible decrease of the number of compliments paid to the recipient’s inner
world and, conversely, an increase in the number of complimentary utterances addressing
the positive traits of the addressee such as accomplishments, skills and possessions.
Both negative and positive (sporadically nonverbal) reactions to the complement are
visible  from  the  texture  of  stage  directions.  Both  could  be  reacted  to  in  a  mixed  way.
Accepting  a  compliment  presupposes  the  addressee’s  self-praise,  although  the  dramas
examined revealed examples of the situations that yielded no reaction to the complement.
Diachronically, the compiled corpus of examples for the type of dialogical unities studied
seems  to  reveal  that throughout  the  surveyed  material,  even though  with  some  external
century-induced numeric fluctuations, negative response to compliments are by and large
prevalent  throughout  the  period  over  the  corresponding  positive  compliment-induced
retorts. The compliment is typically paid in a situation involving equal-status participants.
The  descending  social  scale  toward  the  recipient  triggers  off  a  higher  occurrence  of
complimentary  utterances.  Also,  surprisingly,  males  are  complimented  more  often  than
females.
In  terms  of  intentionality  compliments  in  dramas  fall  under  direct  and  indirect
utterances which can be expressed both explicitly and implicitly. Understandably, a direct
performative mode of expression is not typical of drama, most of the utterances prove non-
performative. The compliment is often hedged by definition. For this matter it is stripped
of explicitly set forms of expression. The compliment is accompanied by speech markers
that  are  sensitive  to  the  speaker’s  intentionality,  primarily  nouns  and  adjectives  of
evaluative semantics. The overall meaning evolution of the compliment testified towards
the drift from the emotional to the rational. This is attributed to a change of the social-
economic  relations  and  moral-ethical norms  as  well  as  cultural-aesthetic values  that  are
characteristic of the speakers of German.
Keywords:  compliment,  speech  act,  dramas,  linguistic  pragmatics,  historical
pragmatics, politeness, diachronic analysis.