Discommunication: Intercultural, Discursive and Linguoecological Aspects

Abstract

The article clarifies the concept of discommunication, defines its place among the related concepts of communicative failure and communicative conflict, and suggests ways of studying discommunication at the discourse level. A new interpretation of discommunication is proposed in the framework of the linguoecological approach to communication developed by V.I. Shakhovsky. Discommunication is treated as an umbrella term that unites various manifestations of ineffective communication which can occur due to many reasons. At the intercultural and intracultural levels, discommunication can result from non-implementation or incomplete implementation of the communicative intention, failure to achieve the communicative goals, or their mismatch. The resulting ineffectiveness of communication and the ineffectiveness of the communicative interaction are due to a number of reasons, both linguistic and extralinguistic, among which are violation of ethical norms and ecology of communication; non-observance of the rules of argumentation; using manipulative strategies; unsuccessful verbalization of the intention by the addresser. The latter is exemplified in detail with the excerpts from the Russian-language courtroom discourse. It is represented through violations in goal-setting and errors in the formulation of the idea. Expanding the list of discourses for analyzing discommunication will allow identifying the specifics of its implementation in various speech genres and types of communication, and help determine its causes and outline ways to overcome it.