Semantic structure of the oral message and its main components

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 614.

Main points

4.1 Semantic structure of the oral message and its main components

4.2 The role of the rhematic components in comprehending and interpreting oral

messages

4.3 Rendering of the “evaluative component” of messages in interpreting

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Linguistics distinguishes between the notions of meaning, sense and semantics[see Бондарко 2001: 57-61, Падучева 1985: 7-19, Чернов 1987: 64-78]. The term semantics has three meanings: 1) contents, all information rendered by linguistic units; 2) the branch of linguistics dealing with contents or information rendered by linguistic units; 3) one of the fields of semiotics (the study of signs and sign using behaviour) [Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь 1990: 438].

Meaning of linguistic units is usually described as their contents reflected in the respective dictionaries or grammar books. The notion of sense goes outside pure linguistics and has to do, first of all, with the context and situation of communication (the subject field of communication, aims of participants, their background knowledge, etc). Therefore sense of linguistic units comes to life in real speech as a result of relations established between meanings of linguistic units and communicative situations [Чернов 1987: 65]. And indeed, it is practically impossible to translate such words as, for instance, coach, challenge, benchmark, event, network, intervention, cohesion, outstanding, fantastic, powerless, admit, account, run, рахунок, партія, фракція, справа (orpractically any other word) until the word is placed in thecontext and until the act of predication (i.e. creation of a proposition) takes place. Therefore, interpreters render the sense of linguistic units, which is generated in each particular act of speech as a result of producing messages by the speakers.

Messages, both written and oral, have certain semantic structure, the main element of which is the proposition, i.e. a “picture” of the world, a “statement” about the world, which may be true or false, which is (normally) pronounced with a certain purpose, and which (normally) has the subject and the predicate (elements of the predicative group), e.g. “It is cold outside”; “Frosts are expected for tonight”; “Kyiv is the capital city of Ukraine”, etc.

However messages, to acquire sense and become “workable” acts of speech, must also contain the following components, which may be verbally expressed (explicit) or “hidden” (implicit):

n the deictic component: orientation of the message with regard to the “person”, space” and “time”, e.g. I warn youthat it isprobablycold outside;

n the modal component: treating of the proposition by the speaker as possible, impossible, desired, mandatory, unnecessary, likely, unlikely, doubtful etc, e.g. I warn you that it is probably cold outside;

n the evaluative component (оцінний компонент): positive or negative evaluation of the elements of the proposition by the speaker (or absence of such evaluation – “zero evaluation”), e.g. I warn you that it is cold(negative evaluation) outside, so, since you are unwell(negative evaluation), you'd rather wear your warm (positive evaluation) sweater;

n the pragmatic component: indicator of the aim of pronouncing the utterance (communicative intent or intention) as it is viewed by the speaker [see Почепцов 1975, Austin 1961, Searle 1979], e.g. I warn (the act of warning) you that it is cold outside.

It is quite obvious that for interpretation to be successful it is not enough to translate only the “propositional element” of the message but also to render all other components of its semantic structure, thus ensuring that it “makes sense” for the listener and produces desired (by the original speaker) effect upon him/her.

4.2 The role of the rhematic components in comprehending and interpreting oral

messages

Semantics of oral discourse has also to do with the notions of the theme and the rheme. The theme is treated as the “subject” (the “known” part) of the message while the rheme describes “what happens to the theme” and thus ensures that “new information” is constantly being “fed” into the discourse. Any word (phrase) in the utterance may make up either the theme or the rheme. Usually the thematic or rhematic nature of words (phrases) is determined by the word order, definite or indefinite articles, adjectives or intonation, e.g. A girl (the rheme) waved at us(the theme) asking for a lift. The girl (the theme) was rather pretty (the rheme), so our driver agreed. Normally rhematic elements are placed at the end of utterances, however if they occupy unusual front position as a result of the speaker's desire to make greater emphasis upon them, they may become a serious problem for simultaneous interpreters who will have to wait untill the utterance is completed before they may start interpreting it. This often happens in the consecutive and simultaneous interpreting from Ukrainian and Russian into English, e.g. Другим після цього закону у нас був прийнятий Трудовий кодекс; Автобазу має він свою, проте не дають йому роботи.

Practice shows that having understood the theme of the message, the interpreter starts to look for the new, rhematic information in the message, which has to do with processes, actions and their evaluation as well as for the information about intentsof the speaker. It being so, the rhematicpartof the utterance, which is also called the “informational focus” [Чернов 1987: 166-178], becomes essential for interpreting.

Thus, the semantic structure of the message Evenings may be very cold in Scotland can be graphically represented as follows [see also Максiмов 2006: 100-101[1]]: