Language game in speech activity

Human speech activity is based mainly on the use of ready-made communicative units. Forming the statement, we necessarily resort to schemes, templates, cliches. And without mastering the status-role and genre-role stereotypes of communication, in which language units are sufficiently strongly linked to typical situations, the interaction of language personalities would be difficult. And yet, with the validity of the above reasoning, it is permissible to speak about este-

tic elements of everyday everyday communication. The peculiarity of lively conversational communication consists precisely in the fact that stenciliness and templating are combined in it with a clearly pronounced orientation on creativity. The famous French linguist, S. Bally, wrote: “It is quite obvious that speech in the broadest sense of the word, that is, the common language, has an aesthetic resource. A writer who consciously seeks to produce one or another aesthetic effect does not create something new every time, but draws the main elements of his style from the public language. ”

Of course, the meaning and function of creativity in colloquial speech are different from the aesthetic properties of the artistic text. In live communication, creativity is manifested primarily in the form of a language game .

Philosophers and psychologists consider the game one of the fundamental properties of human culture. This is an activity that does not pursue any specific practical goals. The goal of the game is to give pleasure to people who take part in it. Strictly speaking, art also obeys the laws of play behavior. The language game is a phenomenon of speech communication, the content of which is the installation on the form of speech, the desire to achieve in the expression of effects similar to the effects of art literature. Such “decoration” usually has the character of sharpness, juggling, pun, jokes, etc.

The language game is different from children's word creation. It is based on a deviation from stereotypes while realizing the inviolability of these stereotypes. If a child says “the cat's mouth has been blunted”, “we have been drinking”, “uhololodni water”, etc., it is necessary for them to create new words - he just does not know how to say it. . The same can be said about children's metaphors. Speaking of the “red-cheeked bus”, “fluffy little water” (about the foamy trail behind the river tram), “a bottle of vomiting” (about champagne), the child sincerely attributes the properties to all these objects. The word creation of a child is a creative endeavor, creativity without installation on creativity.

Another thing - the adult language game. It begins, as a rule, only after mastering the normative methods of speech communication. “When the sense of the norm is brought up in a person,” wrote L.V. Shcherba, “then he begins to feel the whole

the charm of reasonable deviations from it. " If an educated person says “well, run away” or “where can I get things from?”, He knows that “run away” and “kuda” is a deviation from the norm. But it is the awareness of such a digression, the deliberate mixing of the literary norm and regional elements that makes the game a game.

The language game has a comic effect setting. She embodies the fun, laughing face of human speech activity. But the funny in speech should not be ignored as something unimportant, unworthy of the attention of scientists. Laughter, as M. M. Bakhtin showed in his works, is a very serious matter. “A real laugh,” the researcher wrote, “does not deny seriousness, but purifies and replenishes it. Cleans from dogmatism, one-sidedness, ossification, from fanaticism and categorical, from elements of fear or intimidation, from didactism, from naivety and illusions, from bad monotonousness and unambiguity, from stupid istoshnost. Laughter does not give seriousness to freeze and break away from the incomplete integrity of being. "

The game can affect almost all levels of the structure of the language. So, for example, a kind of language game becomes a distortion of the phonetic shell of the word: instead of another they say ishsho , instead of tea - tsai , instead of a piece of paper - bamazhka . Gaming phonetic deformations of words can have the character of metathesis (syllable permutation) - ochepyatka instead of a typo , trick job instead of a pillowcase , mamerlad instead of marmalade ; prostheses (use of false sounds) - croxword instead of crossword , sytarik instead of old man , etc.

Not only the phonetic, but also the morphological form can be deformed. Speech juggling can be based on different types of transformations of the grammatical form of a word: changing the gender of a noun, deliberately incorrect formation of case forms, etc. Let us give examples of conversational recordings given in the collective monograph of Moscow linguists. “ How is my beloved girlfriend?” “Do they have children? Just put one . ”

The game can create forms, the existence of which the language system excludes; for example, the relative degree of a noun. " My wife is a witch, and he has a witch." "Of course you are an eagle, yes I am more eagle ."

The language game can be built on violations, syntactic laws. The game effect, for example, occurs

when using intransitive verbs in the transitive position: “ Have you had lunch? Let me dine you ”(in the sense of“ I will feed ”); “ We all join the society of nature conservation ” (in the sense of being enrolled); “ I fattened him up, I ’ll lose him and lose him ” (make him lose weight) (examples from the book by B. Yu. Norman). Another way is the absolutive use of verbs requiring mandatory distribution: “ A. Well, how is your vest? B. Vest produced ! "" A, (leaving home for a visit) Throw me around! " (In the sense - look at it).

One of the most common types of language games is the destruction of phraseological units, stable language combinations. Sometimes it looks like a contamination - crossing of phraseological units, when the beginning of one phrase joins the end of another: “ don't spit in the well — you won't fly out ,” “ took the plow — get into the body, ” etc. In other cases, the Russian idiom is altered in a foreign way: “ Not according to Juan a sombrero ” (not according to Senka a cap); “ Lady from the stage - pony is easier ” (a woman with a cart makes a mare lighter); “ Pence guinea saves ” (penny saves the ruble), etc.

The creation of a comic effect also serves to invent pseudo-pazeologisms, in which the phrase-maxim is built on the principle of alogism: “ it is better to sleep than underfed”, “it is better to be rich but healthy than poor but sick”, “better bird in the hand than duck under the bed "," it will be difficult - send the money "," you will be there - pass by "," ugly, but stupid girl " , etc.

An interesting type of language game is the lettering of phraseological units. Elements of indecomposable idiomatic combinations in these cases are used in a free disjoint meaning. As an illustration of this kind of game, one can cite the beginning of A. Degtyarev's Humoresque “Deep”.

The hut of Makar stood on the edge, on the jelly banks of the Molochnaya River. Having risen somehow in the morning from Procrustev's bed and having broken into the open door, Makar added fuel to the fire, brought the ducks to clean water and habitually drove the calves somewhere.

The morning was as clear as day. Waving away smoke without fire, Makar rolled down the ramp down to the herd.

On the pasture calves dispersed - who in the forest, who for firewood. Makar sat down in a puddle, bit the bit and simply opened a small box with a broken grosh, which he mistakenly took for good coin.

There was a ring. "Where is he from? - thought Makar and looked around through his fingers ...

The most striking manifestation of linguistic juggling is considered to be a word-building game. It resembles the children's word-writing described by KI Chukovsky (which we have already talked about and will be talking about). Most often, this type of game is manifested in the creation of occasional, word-and-a-half words, formed from frequency derivational models. Here are some examples from the above-mentioned collective research of colloquial speech: “ He should be oxidized more often” (led to the cinema); “Well, everybody has been oppressed” (said thank you); (talk about the arrival of guests) “They are okhalaty, strayed. And Pododshkeny "; "She's actually mega"; "Petrov is already in our school of petition . "

Occasionalisms of this type can be used in various kinds of poetic epigrams. A striking example here is the famous epigram of A. S. Pushkin to his lyceum friend, poet V. K. Kuchelbecker.

Once Alexander Sergeevich came to visit his lyceum friend A. Delwig and found him in a gloomy mood. On the question of the causes of illness Delvig said:

“You see, I ate too hard at dinner, but here.” Kuchelbecker brought the devil: the whole evening tormented me with odes.

Pushkin immediately composed the epigram:

I ate too much at dinner

And Yakov locked the door in error -

So it was to me, my friends,

And kyukhelbeknerno and sickening.

Arising in speech, such neoplasms are usually immediately forgotten and disappear without a trace. The most successful of them can be repeated in any group of linguistic personalities. The brightest - are able to filter into widespread usage and even enter the dictionary of the common language.

In the first chapter of our book, we talked about the existence in the consciousness of the linguistic personality of associations by formal similarity. In other words, we associate words similar in sound. This feature of speech thinking has become the basis for the classic type of language game - pun. A pun is built on replacing words with similar phonetics.

to sound. Shop "Gifts of Nature", for example, jokingly called "Holes of nature." Here are some more examples from conversations,

"There is such a door in the style of a vampire" (Empire); "Shampoo buy or dry?" (Cf. champagne - shampoo); "BUT. What are you doing? B. All evening she was huddled ”(practiced yoga); "Where is your vague financial report", (estimate and financial); “I went to the fraud bureau today” (exchange); “His erudition is total nonsense”; "Worried worker" (scientific) , etc.

The game is based on the same principle in “misprints”, cited in different comic sections of newspapers and magazines:

“With genuine nasty”, “pork shower”, “balsam age”, “wheel of growth”, “smokyadchtsy”, “grezidium”, “semi-finished product”, “tusk of sight”, “against the fate”, “ferrobacon”, “vanilla cake with flaws "," drunk from the academic schedule "," kaifedra "," lethal dose of training "," arrogantly Russian dictionary "," seizure of the department "," dormitory "," resident "," etching "," kradukty "," pig expression ”,“ moderation in the future ”,“ polling station ”, etc.

Special mention should be made of puns, which are based on a phenomenon similar to the phenomenon of folk etymology. In this case, the word is given in a deliberately wrong meaning, which follows from the misinterpretation of the inner form. This game principle, by the way, is often used in anecdotes. As an example, we present a literary anecdote of the XIX century.

The critic F. Bulgarin loved to attend the funerals of his fellow literary men. One day he ended up at the funeral of N. A. Polevoy, with whom he had a very hostile relationship during his life. Bulgarin tried to settle down among the friends of the deceased who carried the coffin. They drove him away, saying: "You have reviled him sufficiently in life."

Here are examples from conversations.

“ Well, we are stunned with you” (two women, having bought the same dresses with polka dots); "I will be engaged in heartbreaking" (taking a heart-shaped cookie); "I am a terrible libertine" (unwinding wool); "Broth slowly sausage ", etc.

On a deliberately misinterpretation of derivative words, a playful vocabulary dictionary was built, which, even during his student years, together with schoolmates-philologists, was invented by a domestic psycholinguist B.Yu. Norman. He received the same playful name - “Entomological Dictionary”. Having started its existence in the student wall newspaper, the dictionary soon migrated to the famous comic page 16 of Literature. Having become the subject of a nationwide review, the dictionary unexpectedly for its authors gained wide popularity. From all over our country a stream of letters from readers, containing a continuation and imitation. Here are some "interpretations" of this dictionary.

Crossbow - the load of years, acquired experience.

Bagel - a sheep.

The battle is the exclamation of a slimming woman.

Batisfera - the sphere of intervention of the father.

Vampire - the waiter.

Voltairian - a zealous electrician.

Gladiator - employee bath

laundry combine. -

Hound - tea party.

Distrofik- poem of two stanzas.

Datura - a stupid man.

Priest - glutton, glutton.

Sniffer - a man who returned from a trip around the world.

Interpol (abbr.) - an interesting position.

The interior is an alien dog.

Tumbler - sober.

Nudist - boring speaker.

The inventory is a baby surprise.

Polyglot - a glutton (the same as the Priest)

The gatekeeper is a lover

Guide - driver V. V. Putin.

The radio operator is an optimist.

Samovar - a bachelor.

Shorthand - graffiti.

The watchman is the public.

Trepanation - chatter.

Platypus - a nurse in the hospital.

The fatalist is the bride.

The blank cartridge is an unmarried boss.

Teahouse - (stud.) Thought: probably two.

Scales - recognition by a dermatologist.

Pagan - linguist

The reader himself can replenish the pages of the Entomological Dictionary.

The examples given illustrate well the nature of the language game. A humorous, seemingly frivolous dictionary nevertheless contains rich food for thought by linguistic scholars. The psycholinguist will see, firstly, the confirmation of the thought of the presence of word-building models in linguistic consciousness, secondly, a demonstration of the mechanism of using linguistic units in speech, the peculiarities of influencing the linguistic meaning of the real context and communicative situation, thirdly, that Y. Norman successfully called "a cemetery of unrealized opportunities" - showing ways of developing language and speech, and from stocks and quite rare words.

The language game can be built not only on the exploitation of units of different language levels. Some of its varieties affect the role and style differentiation of speech activity. However, here the game effect is achieved by violating role stereotypes and stylistic norms when the speaker is aware of the inviolability of these norms and stereotypes. One of these varieties of language game is based on the speaker's desire to speak in an unusual speech manner. The person puts on a speech mask: he starts speaking like a villager, like a bureaucrat, a child, a lisping lady, a foreigner, etc.

Especially often for such purposes dialect and colloquial language masks are used. Imitating the talk of the villagers or the speech of the urban lower classes, the linguistic personality encrusts their statements with words that have phonetic, morphological and lexical signs of dialect and common language. " Well, nya know, nya know, I will burst out nya I will"; "Well, you are vumna-a"; “I saw him - when? “Yesterday”; “Netto you understand this”; “This is what we can do for free”; “We have no water down there at all”; "Can I fuck up?"; "BUT. Are you sleepy? B. Yes, but without becoming aware. Do not rest .

Another means of creating a comic is to accept style contrast. It is based on the movement of words and expressions from one

speech style to another. For such purposes, the most commonly used are stationery-business language stamps, newspaper cliches, etc. “ Let us tell Kolya how everything was. And about the wedding, and about the holiday "," We decided on Sunday "(to invite guests)," A. Tell me how the picture? B. It is necessary to impose such a resolution: rubbish ”; "Sergey Vasilyevich was looking for you on the subject of a book on the table."

Less often, for the purposes of a language game in colloquial speech, a high book-poetic style is used. "I will broadcast the report tomorrow"; "I'll go look in the mirror"; "It turns out he was dying."

A funny example of a language game was coined by two prominent scientists, professors N. A. Ippolitova and M. Yu. Fedosyuk, experts in the field of communication culture, a parody text that they gave during the backstage communication at a conference on rhetoric