Speech behavior in a state of emotional tension

The emotional component always has a place in people's lives and is an inseparable practical component of every communication situation. Emotional tension is an emotional state characterized by intense emotional experiences during speech communication

. In the process of achieving the goals of communication, a person simultaneously exerts some influence on the interlocutor. According to A.A. Bodalev, influencing is an integral component of any joint activity, regardless of its orientation . In emotional tension there are significant shifts in the realization of speech operations that require conscious control over the quality of their implementation, there is a sharp increase in the number of meaningless and inadequate reactions.

In a state of emotional tension people quickly increase the stereotypicality of reactions. In an emotiogenic situation the number of concrete vocabulary increases, which can be explained by the fact that abstract vocabulary is acquired by people later, in contrast to concrete vocabulary, and in a situation of emotional tension people begin to use exactly the fixed, concrete, vocabulary

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There are situations in which emotions suppress speech, but in most cases, only some of its forms are disintegrated, adapted to the situation of emotional tension.

The speaker's speech is characterized by the cumulative use of intensification means of different levels, especially when emotions are carried out in affective form. Phraseologisms, repetitions, syntactic parallelisms can act as means of intensification. The semantic content of emotional speech is filled with evaluative meanings - positive or negative, corresponding to the emotions experienced by the speaker.

A great material for the study of emotional speech provides conversational speech, because it is this form of speech shows the natural, real sphere in which emotional utterances are realized. The term “colloquial speech” is used to define speech in informal communication, where the communicative function of language can be traced to the greatest extent. The special features of such communication are in the direct indispensable participation of the interlocutor, in the spontaneity of speech, in unpreparedness and in thematic flexibility.

The main focus of oral communication is the dialogue. It appears as an elementary or simple form of human communication. Dialogical speech, dialog is defined as an oral form of speech, speech communication, by means of an exchange of replicas between two persons.

Replicas in dialogue do not act as independent units, neither in terms of form nor in terms of its content, because it is situationally conditioned. Dialogue as a form of human communication and as a linguistic category is an exchange of replicas, utterances, generated one after another in the process of dialogical communication.

From the point of view of compositional construction, the dialogue does not have structure and clarity due to the fact that it is built by joint speech efforts of two or more people who take part in the communication. This fact leaves a certain trace on the nature of the use of linguistic means in a dialogue.

Dialogue is characterized by the presence of counter relations and the use of special forms of communicative attitude serving language communication

. Based on this, the dialogic topic is characterized by great activity and dynamism. Different points of view, coinciding or divergent, are observed in dialogue. Dialogue is an interpretation of each other's points of view, from complementarity and includes the expectation of an answer, as well as its anticipation in the own statement .

Dialogue is a specific type of text, which occupies a certain niche in a complex hierarchical text system. The characteristics of a dialogical text are those that make it similar to other types of texts and that make it different from the latter in a certain way, showing the specificity of its content plan.

To distinguish dialogue types, A.K. Solovyova presented a whole range of different parameters: logical ordering/predominant expressive coloring; dialogicality of lines/monologicality of lines; picking up the interlocutor's thoughts/interruption, etc. The combination of all the parameters helped to identify the types of dialog. Combining all the parameters helped to identify dialogue — explanation, dialogue — dispute, dialogue — unison, dialog — quarrel

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According to the purpose (coordinating behavior, informing, influencing) dialogues are divided into three types: complementary, complementary and coordinative.

An exceptional case of a dialog is a quick, jerky conversation on business or mundane topics, which is characterized by: a relatively quick exchange of statements, the exchange of lines without prior thought, the absence of special assignment of the components, the construction of lines without premeditated connection and the highest degree of brevity of lines.

A characteristic feature of a dialogue is the presence of replicated speaking, i.e. the speech of one person is replaced by the speech of another, and this alternation takes place either in the order of interrupting the interlocutor, which happens most often in an emotional dialog, or in the order of alternation.

L.P. Yakubinsky states that dialogue is characterized by mutual interruption to a certain extent. Interruption is always present in dialogue, determining the whole process of speaking. The expectation of “interruption”, the fear of not having time to express one's thought to the end determine the pace of speech and make it fast

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These characteristics of colloquial speech in a dialogue speak about the prevalence of elliptical sentences in it, which show the economy of linguistic expressive means, thus, less informative and more predictable statements are excluded from dialogic conversation.

Interpretation of implication expressions, including all linguistic levels, is possible with the help of the concept of “zero form”. According to this, unfinished utterances are cut off by zero speech, both formal and substantive emptiness

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Let us return to the consideration of emotional tension. Speech interruption in the dialog of people in emotional tension is manifested in two types of speech situations. The first situation characterized by incompleteness of the speech chain composition informs about the interlocutor's excitement, i.e. it is difficult for the speaker to cope with his emotions and therefore he is forced to interrupt his speech. The second situation, also characterized by incompleteness of lines in a dialogue, indicates that the interlocutor is interrupted and is deprived of the opportunity to complete his point of view, his opinion.

Here are some examples:

1. Jack (angry): I thought I could help her, I should have known better, I can't help you.

2. Linda: It's wonderful, Sam — you are the bravest man who's ever come into my life.

In the first example, the man blames himself for being powerless to help his own girlfriend. The accusatory remarks addressed by the speaker to himself are cut short because he cannot control his emotions. The indicator of anger in this example is the specifier — angry. The emotional tension of the hero is revealed in the use of a pair of short constructions with modal verbs within the boundaries of one dictem. A dicteme is an elementary thematic unit in connected speech, and in a dialog a dicteme is a whole rejoinder

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The rapturous sentences in the second example are cut short because the heroine, as well as the hero in the first example, cannot overcome the emotional tension.

In these two examples, the shortened sentences speak of a person's mental excitement.

Now let us give an example of a situation where the reason for incomplete sentences is that the speaker is interrupted.

Kelly: She'll come in an hour or two for supper.

Brendon: I don't want her in our home.

Kelly: Who asked your opinion?

Brendon: Such a woman —

Kelly: Forget it! Just forget it!

Brendon: I can't! She —

Kelly: Don't say a word! I was talking to you about this! And you said —

Brendon: I can't stand her.

In this situation of emotional tension, a married couple quarrels because of the wife's friend, who is absolutely disliked by her husband. Each of the interlocutors tries to express his point of view, interrupting the other and trying not to lose the speech initiative. The graphic descriptor, which is a dash, indicates a break in phrases. An indicator of the emotional tension of the couple is the use of inversion, repetitions, short exclamatory constructions, splitting sentences into parts. The high emotionality of dictems in this dialog, reflected in the style of the text, indicates a high level of emotional tension of communicators in this situation.

Taking into account the state of mind of the speakers, emotion-laden dialogues can be subdivided: into dialogues in which both participants of communication are in a state of extreme emotional tension and dialogues in which one of the interlocutors is in a state of affect, and the second rationally argues in opposition to the first.

Emotional tension affects people and therefore there are difficulties in the perception of speech, reduces the understanding, completeness and adequacy of the information received.

The speaker's speech is deformed by the state of emotional tension, which is reflected in the omission of stressless syllables, in repetitions of constructions and in the use of syntactic parallelisms.

There are situations in which the speaker himself tries to calm himself down and gain control over himself. Emotional tension in such situations is extremely high, because the speaker is close to a state of affect, but at the same time tries to calm down, drawing logical conclusions for himself and for others.

A characteristic feature of emotions is their contagiousness, thus, a person, feeling emotional tension, is able to awaken reciprocal emotions in his interlocutor. The second communicator quickly expresses reciprocal emotions through repetition of constructions and words, using evaluative constructions.

The examples given above show that speech in a dialog demonstrates the most natural and wide area of realization of the regularities of functioning of emotional utterances

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Thus almost every situation of communication has an emotional component. There is a whole range of human emotional states: interest, fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, apathy, resentment. And each emotional state is characterized by its own special features and causes of occurrence. It should be added that absolutely all situations cause any emotional reaction, being thus emotiogenic.

Under the influence of emotions, behavior, speech and mental state of a person can change significantly. The speaker's speech is characterized by the cumulative use of intensification means of different levels (phonetic, morphological lexical and syntactic). The combination of several means in one phrase intensifies the phrase emotive load several times.

A great material for the study of emotional speech provides conversational speech, because it is this form of speech shows the natural, real sphere in which emotional statements are realized. Also, it should be mentioned that the main center of oral communication is a dialog, which is an exchange of lines between two persons.