Shumanova Larisa V.,

professor Taganrog institut of managment and economics

13 Turgenevsky street Taganrog 347900 Russia.

 

The diagnostics of speaker´s personality traits on the base of his speech behaviour

 

This article deals with the diagnostic analysis of speaker´s personality traits, which has been evolved in the concealed pragmalinguistics. As a scientific trend it emerged in Russia in the 90s of 20th century and has been quite popular. Its study object is the speaker`s speech behaviour. The speech behaviour research is carried on intentionally and has a final purpose – to diagnose the speaker`s personality traits and  make his speech portraits.

To diagnose the personality traits we must do an objective pragmalinguistic experiment. Its purpose consists in speech experience, speech habit study, which are actualized by à speaker on the perceived level, that is automatically. Speaker`s speech habits reveal themselves in typical speech situations as the various concealed speech signals. We must note, that the set of speech signals in the typical speech situation is varied in the speech of different speakers. The objective pragmalinguistic experiment helps us to find out the speech signals set on the base of which we can draw a conclusion on the speaker`s individual concealed speech experience. We consider that this experiment can be called objective, because its results do not have any subjective suppositions and artificial restrictions. The  study of the speaker`s speech behaviour is based on the choice of linguistic units and on the correlation between the function of these units and personality traits. That`s why this experiment can be referred to pragmalinguistic one [2].

The objective pragmalinguistic experiment has its own unit of recearch. It is called the Small Syntactical Group (SSG), by which we mean the predicative-modal group actualized in speech. This group is represented by the simple uncomplicated sentence, complex sentence, part of compound sentence, infinitive and participle constructions, direct address, parentheses, sentences with homogenuous parts.

The speaker`s speech behaviour research is carried out using such scheme:

·        choosing the speech genre  languages;

·        material collection;

·        texts´decording of speaker`s speech behaviour and their recording in the scripts form for the further computer analyses;

·        text`s division into the Small Syntactical Groups (SSG);

·        texts`analysis of speaker`s speech behaviour according to the presence of speech signals in it;

·        counting the total number of speech signals and its persentage to the total number of SSG;

·        counting  the average speech genre index;

·        diagnostic analysis of speaker`s personality traits.

So the diagnostic analysis of speaker`s personality traits is made on the base of his speech behaviour study. By speech behaviour we mean automatical,  steriotyped speech revealing, that is devoid of realized motivation and has been worked out in the typical communicative situation. A speech behaviour unit is the speech action, making which the speaker samples automatically the specific grammatical category of speech variant of utterance. Speech actions have their own form and context. The speech action form is the speech signals of specific grammatical meanings. The speech action context represents nuances of the sense. They are the different contexts of concealed effect speech strategies. The speaker actualizes these strategies automatically in speech acts. There are six speech strategies of concealed effect, which have been worked out so far. The first three of them are oriented on the speaker, another three on the listener. There are the following speech strategies [3]:

1.     “speaker`s participating/ not participating in speech event” (it is represented by  personal plan, social plan and objective plan);

2.     “speaker`s confident/ non confident speech behaviour in speech event” (it is represented by confident plan and non confident plan);

3.     “speaker`s probable evaluation of the speech event as real/ unreal” (it is represented by the plans of real event, unreal event and irreal event);

4.     “speaker`s formation of the listener`s attitude to the speech event” (it is represented by the plans of positive attitude, negative attitude and neutral attitude);

5.     “speaker`s satisfaction/ unsatisfaction of listener`s pragmatic expectances” (it is represented by the plan of reduntant information, adequate information and unreduntant information);

6.     “speaker`s accentuation of expression`s elements” (it is represented by the plan of expression accentuation and plan of expression unaccentuation).

On the base of the speaker`s personal choice of the speech strategies specific speech signals we can make the speaker`s speech portrets. The speech portret is the set of speaker`s personal traits, which he has acquired in the result of social- and psychological conditional speech experience and which are determined in the each chance by specific situational conditions or limited by the frames of speech genres.

The speaker`s personal traits diagnose is practised by the juxtaposition of speech signals frequency with the thin nuances of sence`context. And we are describing now the nuances of sense of first two concealed speech strategies.

1. The strategy “speaker`s participating/ not participating in speech event” is represented by personal plan, social plan and objeñtive plan. The actualizing`s frequency of the personal plan testifies about such personality traits as self-reliance, domination, activity, energy, demonstration, ambition, egocentrics, self-sufficiency, speaker´s valuation level. The actualizing`s frequency of the social plan is connected with the next traits: collectivism; ability of making positive climate in the environment; cooperation; affiliation; ability of inspiring a sence of sympathy to himself, confidence and love; sociability; impulseness. The actualizing`s frequency of the objective plan is connected with the following personality traits: alienation, refusal from his own position, aspiration to independence, introversion, reticence, uncommunicability, passiveness, inertness, apathy to surroundings, pessimism [1,4].

2. The strategy “speaker`s confident/ non confident speech behaviour in speech event” is represented by confident plan and non confident plan. The actualizing`s frequency of the confident  plan testifies about such personality traits as conviction, optimism, self-efficacy, spontaneity, originality, resolution, self-reliance, energy, persistence, cheerfulness, creative activity, ability to improvisation. The actualizing`s frequency of the nonconfident plan is connected with the following personality traits: cautiousness, nonconfidence, îñìîòðèòåëüíîñòü, stressed politeness, nonreliance, doubt about the truth of something, passivity, apprehensiveness, timidity, anxiousness, ability to self-rebuness, sensitiveness to own criticizm [1,4].

         The other speech strategies of concealed effect help us to determin another speaker`s personality traits and to compliment his speech portret.

 

Bibliography:

1.     Cattell R.B., Eber H.W., Tatsuoka M.M. Handbook of the sixteen personality factor guestionnaire (16PF) – Compaign Illinois, 1970.

2.     Matveeva G. G. The diagnostics of speaker´s personality traits on the base of his speech behaviour. Rostov on Don, 1999.

3.     Matveeva G.G. The nuances of sense in concealed pragmalinguistics.//Philological herald ¹2. Rostov on Don: Rostover State University, 1998. – Ñ.28-32.

4.     Website of dissertations at pragmalinguistics. http://rspu.edu.ru/projects/deutch/ras.html