Communicative parts are seldom recognised as linguistic units. The reason is that dialogues or events of communication are usually divided into steps of communication comprising normally two or more remarks of different participants and united by a common topic. But even if we do it like that each of the participants has his or her own aim and, accordingly, exerts his or her influence upon the partner. As it was shown in sections above actual influence is exerted by a whole series of utterances of a participant or a communicative partner. But since the communicative parts are not yet universally recognised their analysis is done sporadically. As a result the features of them that might be considered grammatical are not yet described. Because of that in this section we shall not differentiate grammatical and non-grammatical features.
Pragmatic analysis in this sphere produced at least three descriptive theories. Two of them are known as principles of communication and describe possible manners of performing communicative parts. In fact these two theoretical frameworks are designed to register and explain the verbal behaviour of a communicant. The third system is aimed to define and describe the strategic or meaningful aims of a communicant and is known as matrix of the communicant.
The first principle of communication is known as the Principle of Co-operation. It was proposed by Paul Grice in 1975. It includes four Maxims that define the contents of utterances of the communicant. They are:
1. Maxim of Quality that demands that one must not tell lies.
2. Maxim of Quantity that demands that one should not use very long and complicated utterances.
3. Maxim of Relevance that demands that one should not mention things that are not directly connected with the topic of conversation.
4. Maxim of Manner that demands that one should not make one’s utterances overcomplicated.
But P.Grice himself noticed that people do not follow these demands. He called this phenomenon Implicatures which mean that a communicant says something but due to certain conventions means something else. The classical example is when somebody pronounces an informative utterance but means a directive, that is a demand to do something. If one says “It’s too stuffy in this room” one usually means that either windows should be opened or the conditioner switched on. In this occasion the communicant disobeys the first maxim — the Maxim of Quality because he says not what he actually means.
The conventions that are most often responsible for disobedience to the maxims of the Principle of Co-operation were summarised by Geoffrey Leech by his Principle of Politeness (1980). The Principle comprises six maxims, all of them are designed to adapt the behaviour of the communicant so that his or her partner would feel at ease. This should be achieved even at the cost of disobeying the Principle of Co-operation.
The third theoretical framework does not actually determine the behaviour of the communicant but produces a frame of actions that can be performed by the communicant to achieve his or her aims. The possible aims are summarised in the matrix of the communicant proposed by M.K.Vetoshkina in 1991. The matrix included five parameters, each having two meanings, namely yes or no. The parameters are: the relative status of the communicants; attitude to the information which means information relative for the activity if the information the participant possesses is sufficient for performing the activity; attitude to the result of the activity which means if the participant thinks the result to be positive for him or her; attitude to the activity which means if the participant is authorised to perform the activity; attitude to regulation of the activity which means if the participant has the authority to regulate the activity. Of these parameters only the first is unchangeable in the course of the dialogue, the other can be changed, the aim of the participant who starts the dialogue and is termed the initiator is to turn those parameters of his or her partner that have the negative meaning into positive using appropriate utterances. To achieve this aim the initiator chooses the parameter which is most crucial for the activity and deduces those that may help to make the crucial parameter positive.
These three theoretical descriptions of the process of communication do not contradict each other because they describe different aspects of a participant’s behaviour. Thus, to understand and describe a communicative part we should use all of them and notice how they co-ordinate with each other.