SPEECH PERSONALITY: COMMUNICATIVE ASPECT (THE ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS BY SHELDON LEE COOPER IN “THE BIG BANG THEORY” TV SERIES)

Abstract

The article discusses the speech personality of Sheldon Lee Cooper in a communicative aspect. The aim of the article is to identify linguistic features of speech acts of Sheldon Lee Cooper. The subject matter of this research is the speech acts typology of Sheldon Lee Cooper’ utterances. Respectively, the object is locution of the utterances, indicating the speech personality of Sheldon Lee Cooper. The article utilizes the classification of speech personalities based on the level of communicative competence, where personality can belong to a strong, mediocre (average) or weak type. Determination of the type of Sheldon Lee Cooper includes the following parameters: creativity, level of text construction of any thematic and genre-stylistic design; mastery of all functional and stylistic varieties of literary language; expanded active vocabulary; combination of different elements of speech, adequate to the objectives of communication; fluency in both oral and written form of speech and unmistakable choice of speech form depending on communicative goals. Analysis of the lexical and grammatical layers of Sheldon Lee Cooper' speech gave grounds to classify the speech personality to a certain type (strong, mediocre (average) or weak). To achieve the aim, the following methods were used: descriptive and structural methods allow us to characterize the typological features of the classification based on level of communicative competence; contextual and speech act analysis were applied to identify the communicative intentions of Sheldon Lee Cooper’s utterances and his attitude to the conversation; the method of linguistic modeling helped to figure out the level of communicative competence of Sheldon Lee Cooper’s speech personality.

Key words: speech personality, linguistic features, speech act, communicative competence, communicative linguistics, strong speech personality.