Ne to slovo! (Wrong word!) – confirmation or refutation?

Abstract

The work was carried out in line with the grammar of dialogue, the initial concept of which is interaction – the act of exchanging speech actions of its participants. The speech actions of the interlocutors can include dialogical cliché, which express, in particular, the attitude to the reported content, the comments on the interlocutor’s opinion, emotional appraisal. The paper aims to investigate the use of a dialogical cliché “Ne to slovo!” (‘Wrong word!’) in comparison with two other similar expressions “Ne govori(te)” (‘Don’t tell me!’), “Da uzh” (‘Yes indeed’). All three expressions are discursive formulas of the speaker’s agreement with the opinion expressed by the interlocutor. However, their peculiarity is that formally the first two are designed as negative remarks of refutation or prohibition, but imply confirmation of the general meaning of the previous statement, while the third, containing a confirmation marker, assumes the presence of a negative and ironic connotation. For choosing an appropriate cliché, it is important to evaluate the content of the previous message as positive or negative. An experimental pilot study on the restoration of missing cliché, based on the material of dialogue texts, allows to refine those observations.