Clichéd compliments in manipulative discourse. Cognitive-pragmatic aspect

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the cognitive-pragmatic approach to the complimentary expressive influctive speech acts. We aim to identify structural models for constructing these statements and the conceptual/cognitive structures underlying them. We argue that a compliment by its nature is a clichéd speech act. We also argue that a compliment has an ambivalent nature and can be used not only with the intention of praise and respect as an element of etiquette, but also with the intention of flattery, correlating with the axiological binary opposition “truth – lie”. In that case, compliment will be involved in the manipulation process. We state that a compliment forms the basis for the category of influctivity due to the fact that it contains emotional and evaluative vocabulary. If a compliment is used with the intention of flattery, the epistemic guarantee is lost, which leads to a manipulative effect on the addressee. During the analysis, the most frequent syntactic models are identified, confirming the clichéd nature of compliments. We draw on the English language material analysis. We prove that flattering compliments are based on a configuration of frames such as “manipulation, trust, control, comfort”, etc. Within such configuration there is a dynamic interaction based on the mechanisms of conceptual projection.