Utterances of Debitive Modality in Associative-Psychological Dimension

Abstract

The article characterizes some debitive utterances on the basis of modern media texts, defines their communicative potential and role in modeling speech situations in order to influence the consciousness of the recipient. The utterances of debit modality are predicative syntactic units with a clear communicative-pragmatic potential, which are characterized by: 1) subjective-objective and potential display of modal content, realized in terms of inevitability, necessity, coercion, demand, expediency, relevance, recommendation; 2) the presence of an accompanying positive or negative evaluation; 3) a set of primary (specialized) and secondary (non- specialized) formal markers – lexical and grammatical means of expression. The use of the method of free associative experiment made it possible to detect the conscious- subconscious reaction of Ukrainians of different ages to the utterances of debitive modality and differentiation of structures into several groups according to different degrees of obligation and their function to evoke negative or positive associations. 40 participants of Lesia Ukrainka University and Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi Hryhorii Skovoroda State Pedagogical University were selected for the experiment, including 25 students aged 20-24 and 15 teachers aged 45 to 55. The utterances of different debitivity selected from media texts became the material of the research (50 structures- stimuli). Due to the degree of obligation, as well as positive or negative reactions, respondents rated the sentence on a scale from 0 to 4.