The problem of participants in a speech event in modern pragmatics

Perhaps one of the most fundamental problem of contemporary pragmatics is that of the participants in a speech events. Nevertheless this problem, its significance and interpretation, has so far been practically ignored in Russian linguistics. The purpose of this paper is to present the modern discussion field to this problem. The first part of the paper offers an summary of the problem as it stands today. I attempt to summarize the conception of participation from D. Hymes and E. Goffman to A. Bell. Wherein Goffman’s concepton is more extensive than Hymes’s and Bell’s and the importance of it can hardly be overestimated. In the article is analyzed a three main approaches to the problem: ethnographic, sociological and sociolinguistic. The second part focuses on the limitations of the theories that illustrates by a review of the most important critical papers involving this problem. The critical direction is presented by S. Levinson, J. Irvine and W. Hanks. Emphasis is on the discussion of decomposition of participants roles and relationship between participant roles and person forms. The paper also asserts that the phenomenon of computer's communication is very difficult to explain on this thories. The theory becomes untenable when applied to account for polyloge on Internet. For examples, the Goffman's concepts of Eavesdropper and «unratified perticipant» are inadequate for explanation many forms of computer-mediated communication.

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