Conventions of speech behavior in English language games

The article is devoted to the study of conventions of speech behavior in communicative English language games. The communication modeled in the game differs from everyday interaction in managed conditions and strict algorithms prescribed by the game rules. Reproducibility of the game results and management of the game process allow to define a language game as an experiment stimulating the native speaker’s metalanguage reflection on the patterns of language and speech functioning. The article focuses on the communicative conventions expounded in the extended theory of speech acts. The principles of cooperation, awareness, and politeness that ensure the success of speech interaction in everyday communication are distorted and refracted in accordance with the conditions of language games. Analysis of speech acts in communicative language games shows that the dynamics of the application of the maxims of cooperation, awareness, and politeness is characterized by an inverse negative relationship. An amplification or absolutization of one of the principles leads to a reduction or neutralization of the other. The speech behavior of the players testifies to such constructive features of linguistic games as an appeal to folklore traditions, stimulation of negative politeness strategies, shifting the criteria of “truth” and “falsity” towards “plausibility” and “implausibility”. It is concluded that the exploitation of communicative conventions in language games increases the metalanguage reflection of the native speaker, on the one hand, on the semiotic properties of finitude, dynamism, and openness of the sign system, on the other hand, on the speech properties of recursivity, maieuticity and contextual determinacy. The metalanguage comments of the players allow to establish that the potential unit of language thinking is the “communicative fragment” as a stationary particle of language experience used in the creation and interpretation of statements.