NEGATION AS BASIC DISCOURSE CATEGORY

Abstract

The article deals with negation as speech strategy and analyzes its peculiarities in modern English. Also, the theoretical foundation of negation as discourse category is investigated, the position of negation among the facts of speech activity is determined and its pragmatic specificity is defined. Besides that situational examples of negation and the notions related to it are analyzed. Communicative-pragmatic factors of the realization of negation in the communicative surrounding are investigated in the article. Discourse characteristics point out high frequency and communicative relevance of negation in the English language. Negation is not a specific characteristic of a separate language as it has many universal functions in comparison to socio-linguistic peculiarities that mostly perform the catalyzing function. Moreover, in the English language it is possible to highlight the semantic field of the category of negation. Such a status confirms the importance of this notion for the communicative competence and for the adequate communicative conduct. Though adequate perception of negation demands additional extra lingual knowledge in communication the fact that only the speech invariant is present in this type of communicative conduct remains undeniable.