The Problem of the Effectuation of an Empathogenic Communicative Situation on the Illocutionary Functioning of Empathic Speech Acts

This article is an extension of the author’s study concerned with the verbal sphere of empathy in a func-tional-pragmatic focus. The purpose of the work is to demonstrate the conditionality of the illocutionary functio-ning of empathic speech manifestations according to the empathogenic communicative situation in the pragmatic structure of verbal empathy. The analysis was based on material borrowed from Russian and French communica-tion platforms with the common themes “He/she abandoned me” and “The birth of a child”. The author’s interpre-tation of the “empathogenic” situation was proposed as a result of the joint verbal behavior of the addressee and the addressee, whose illocutionary intention is to initiate and maintain dialogical statements with empathic potential. Two poles of an empathogenic situation are identifi ed based on the qualitative indicator of the valence of a posi-tive/negative sign characterizing the eventful nature of the situation, as well as the manifestation of positively or negatively charged emotions of communicants. The urgency is determined by the functional description of the pragmatic meanings of empathic utterances involving the previously unconsidered positive emotional range of in-teraction between communicants, an attempt to establish the substructural interaction of empathic functions and subfunctions in the illocutionarily organized spheres of empathy and co-rejoycing as well. As the issue, the obvious importance of the eff ectuation of an empathogenic speech situation on the verbalization of empathic illocution was established. The general illocutionary functions of “consolation” of the empathic sphere of empathy and “prolonga-tion of joyful feelings” of the empathic sphere of co-rejoycing are described. Subordinated empathic subfunctions with speech-acting manifestations in empathic messages are presented. Invariant subfunctions of empathic orien-tation, namely cognitive-evaluative, encouraging, and participative in situations of positive and negative emotional background, are determined. The illocutionary types of (sympathetic) understanding and argumentation of “this is life” are demonstrated as speech mechanisms of consolation in an empathogenic situation of a negative emotional range. A positively oriented communication situation is verbalized by a speech act of co-rejoycing, (good)wishes, praises, or a speech strategy to promote “I’m ready to help”.