INSTITUTIONAL COMPLAINT IN WRITTEN COMMUNICATION OF NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS

Abstract

Тhis article is devoted to the analysis of the speech act of an institutional complaint. As a special com municative act and a socially signifi cant type of text, its main illocutionary goals are to inform the addressee about the problem and to encourage him/her to take action to cope with the unfavorable situation. The institutional complaint in the British language culture is a conventional type of text that facilitates social relations. In the minds of native speakers there is a conceptual model of a complaint, which in certain pragmatic conditions is read appropriately and causes a proper reaction from the addressee. However, in the process of writing institutional complaints, non-native speakers make mistakes, primarily related to the perception and understanding of ano ther language culture and its inherent conventional settings. This happens due to the existence of diff erences at the level of the linguacultural environment, which forms conceptual models of behaviour. In order to determine the infl uence of the native language culture on foreign-language discourse, we conducted a pragmalinguistic expe riment in which native speakers of the Russian language culture were asked to write an institutional complaint in English. As a result of this experiment, we concluded that the models of the Russian language culture infl uenced the English language discourse of the study participants. That is, there was a transfer of discursive models of the Russian language into the English language when writing an institutional complaint. It is important to note that deviation of discursive behavior from the "norms of expectation" of native English speakers can reduce the success of intercultural communication, which is why it is important for the English language learners to develop com municative competencies, expand their knowledge of the principles of cooperative interaction and culturally signifi cant parameters, as well as conventional language strategies to achieve communicative goals in the English language cultures.