PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF THE SPEECH ACTS OF AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT

This article examines the pragmatic features of the speech acts of agreement and disagreement as they operate in face-to-face and written discourse. Drawing on speech act theory, politeness theory, the Cooperative Principle, and conversation-analytic research on preference organization, the study investigates the illocutionary structure, felicity conditions, and contextual determinants of these two fundamental communicative acts. The article argues that agreement and disagreement are not simply propositional stances but complex pragmatic performances whose form and force are shaped by social variables — power, distance, and the management of face. Special attention is given to the asymmetry between agreement as a preferred and disagreement as a dispreferred action in conversational organization, to the strategies speakers use to soften or intensify disagreement, and to cross-cultural variation in the realization of both acts. The findings underscore the need for a multi-framework pragmatic approach that integrates illocutionary, politeness-theoretic, and interactional dimensions.