“Promise” as Speech Behavior Pattern: Method of Contrastive Analysis (Based on Russian and German Languages)

The present paper aims to provide a new methodology for contrastive analysis of basic units of intra- and intercultural communication and exemplify it using the analysis of the speech behavior pattern of promise. In contrast to the other existing terms used for a basic unit of communication behavior, such as speech act (J. Austin and J. Searle), speech genre (M. Bakhtin), the author suggests employing a new one, namely, speech behaviour pattern (SBP). The illocutionary content and general organization of SBP can be considered universal, while its realization in a language is culturally conditioned and therefore may vary significantly in different language communities. When analyzing SBP, one needs to single out and describe the following components: 1) the communicative aim of SBP or its illocution in terms of Natural Semantic Language, 2) the structure of SBP including lexical and grammatical characteristics of the major components of utterances that realize the given pattern, 3) situational-pragmatic factors that influence the realization of SBP, 4) the communicative-pragmatic field reflecting the hierarchical organization of SBP, consisting of the prototypical core and gradually formed periphery, and 5) the perlocutionary effect of SBP, i.e. description of possible reactions to utterances realizing the given pattern. Using the proposed methodology, the author provides a contrastive analysis of the SBP of promise in German and Russian. The study is based on the existing corpora of the two languages