The Topical Issues of the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Author:
- Ol'ga A. Bondar'
- Work direction:
- Современные гуманитарные науки и проблемы языкознания
- Abstract:
- The article examines the communicative and pragmatic potential of the linguocultural phenomenon of «understatement». The author considers «understatement» as a communicative category. The category under study represents the British tradition of communication and is associated with a specific way of life and the British mentality. Moreover, the usage of «understatement» can cause some difficulties and misunderstandings in the intercultural communication. The study provides examples of «understatement» highlighting the variety of communicative functions it performs, such as deliberate withholding of information, polite way of communication, creating ironical and humorous utterances and others. Some linguistic means of the category «understatement» are also described, for example the use of minimizing adverbs, modal modifiers, verbs of opinion, negative grammatical constructions, etc.
- Keywords:
- narrative, irony, understatement, communicative category