NON-VERBAL MEANS FOR DESIGNATING THE “PERSON’S AGE” IN ENGLISH FICTIONAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article analyzes the existing types of non-verbal means for designating the “person's age” in English fictional discourse, which function as behavioural and appearance descriptors in verbal and non-verbal semiotic modules of nomination and description of age meanings. The goal of the thesis was to identify and thoroughly analyze non-verbal means for designating the “person’s age” in English fictional discourse. The material of the study was discursive fragments, which contain non-verbal units that directly or indirectly indicate and describe the character's age characteristics, selected by continuous sampling from the works of fiction by British and American authors. Both general scientific methods and purely linguistic methods were used in the work. The thesis has identified four basic (kinesic, prosodic, tacesic, proxemic) and five hybrid (kinesic-prosodic, kinesic-tacesic, kinesic-tacesic-prosodic, olfactory optic-kinesicprosodic and gustatory-olfactory) modules. It is determined that the greatest differentiation of means for designating the age is observed within the kinesic modules, which include manual (gestures), pantonymic (gait, movement, posture), mimic (facial expression), ophthalmic (look) and situational (redness, complexion, hand shaking) age-related signals. The prosodic signal of voice quality involves a combination of the latter characteristics, i.e. tone, timbre and accent. Prosodic descriptors also include symptomatic signs such as laughter, whistling, or screaming. According to the classification parameter, non-verbal descriptors are distributed into signs-indexes, signs-icons or symbols that perform pragmatic functions of psychological adaptation, age-based self-presentation, self-identification, manipulative influence, threat or avoidance of threat to interlocutor’s face.