Communicative strategies and tactics in the professional discourse of the border guards

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UDC 022:371.134

Communicative strategies and tactics in the professional discourse of the border guards

M.H. Karpushyna, senior instructor,

National Academy of State Border Guard Service of Ukraine

The problem of professional discourse of the border guards with consideration of communicative strategies and tactics has been studied. The analysis of particular language means of the first-line border control has been made; a logical algorithm of border-guards' questions in the situations concerning conducting interviews with the potential victims of trafficking has been listed and suggested. border guard communication language

Keywords: border guards' discourse, language, dialogue, interaction, communication strategy, tactics, text.

Досліджено проблему організації професійного дискурсу офіцерів-прикордонників з урахуванням комунікативних стратегій та тактик. Проаналізовано конкретні мовні засоби першої лінії прикордонного контролю; укладено та запропоновано логічний алгоритм запитань для ситуацій, пов'язаних з веденням співбесіди з потенційними жертвами контрабанди людьми.

Ключові слова: прикордонний дискурс, мова, діалог, взаємодія, комунікативна стратегія, тактика, текст.

Исследована проблема организации профессионального дискурса офицеров-пограничников с учетом коммуникативных стратегий и тактик. Проанализированы конкретные языковые средства первой линии пограничного контроля; составлен и предложен логический алгоритм вопросов для ситуаций, касающихся ведения собеседования с потенциальными жертвами контрабанды людьми.

Ключевые слова: пограничный дискурс, язык, диалог, взаимодействие, коммуникативная стратегия, тактика, текст.

Problem setting. Human trafficking and trafficking in children, including sex trade and sexual slavery are not new phenomena, but lately they have grown greatly, changed their faces and became more complicated, therefore the detection of transnational crime requires special vigilance and professionalism of the border guards. One of the tools to identify victims of cross-border crime is a professional dialogue between a border guard and potential victim of human trafficking. Hence, the development of skills for understanding and maintaining a dialogue is an important qualification for the profession of border guards, and the effective participation in the process of communication, influence on the flow of conversation is one of the most difficult skills of border guards' communicative competence.

Communicative activity of a human being as a part of his professional activity depends on his needs, motivations, objectives, intentions and expectations as well as his practical and communicative actions and communicative situations in which he is involved either as an initiator and leader, or as a "second role" performer [2, p. 7]. Owning to this a language is the most essential element of human activity, on the one hand, and one of the most valuable products of his communicative activity - a discourse, on the other hand. Obviously, rational language learning is only possible in its functioning, in action, in the process of communication and through analysis of the discourse.

Analysis of recent research and publications. For modern cognitive linguistics the research of border-guards' discourse is important as institutional (branch-centered), a type of law enforcement or military discourse and its understanding of a dialogic interaction modes while interviewing a subject of the state border crossing. Methodological foundations of this paper are based on M. Makarov, L. Scherba, N. Arutiunov, D. Shyffrin, Z. Harris, G. Clark, F. Batsevych, V. Karasyk and others' linguistic studies.

According to F. Batsevych, a discourse is a type of communicative activity, interactive phenomenon, the communication flow that has different forms of expression (oral, written, paralinguistic), occurs within a particular channel of communication, is regulated by communicators' strategies and tactics; synthesis of cognitive, linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, which are determined by the specific range of "forms of life", depending on the subjects of communication, and results in the creation of a variety of speaking genres. From F. Batsevych's point of view, a discourse is an expanded speaking construction, that consists of several speaking actions in which every speaker's communicative intention is subordinate to his strategy and tactics [3, p. 338].

The above scholars distinguish two types of discourse: personal (person-centered) and institutional (branch-centered). In the system of institutional discourse such status and role relationships are developed where one of the interlocutors performs a role of a representative of a certain social institution, for instance, a representative of the State

Border Guard Service of Ukraine and the other interlocutor is the subject of the state border crossing. To analyze the institutional (branch-centered) discourse V. Karasyk offers a set of parameters: participants chronotope (time and place of action), goals, values, themes, as well as cliches, strategies and tactics specific for a particular discourse [5, p. 77].

Some scholars understand a speaking strategy as optimal realization of the intentions of a speaker to achieve a specific goal of communication, that is to control and select effective communication actions and their flexible modification in a particular situation [3, p. 336], or a chain of the speaker's decisions, the selection of language tools and speaking actions [6, p. 56]. Whereas particular speaking actions aimed at achieving impact at a certain stage of strategic interaction are called communicative tactics.

So if a speaking strategy offers the overall development of a dialogue, tactics demonstrate the implementation of this strategy at each stage of a communicative situation.

Discourse interaction between a border-guard and a subject of the state border crossing in the process of a dialogic interaction primarily attracts linguists' attention because, firstly, under rather strict regulation of border guards' discourse the officers have to solve a number of tasks associated with the choice of strategies, speaking behavior and specific tactical actions often in critical situations; secondly, it requires the skills of strategic planning and operational situation assessment as well as decision taking skills.

The goal of the article is to study the linguistic resources in specific professional communication; to contribute to the problem of maintaining speaking strategies and speech tactics in border guards' communication.

Statement of basic materials. Speech tactics of the border control character are clearly fixed sequential behavioril manners aimed at achieving specific objectives and implementation of a common strategic objective (verification of border crossing subjects, their documents and quick decisions on admission or non-admission of citizens who cross the border of Ukraine, identification of potential violators of the state border of Ukraine, illegal immigrants, etc.).

Border guards' discourse is a bright example of status-oriented communication, where roles are clearly defined, and each participant performs a corresponding function. Status condition of each participant appears in speaking behavior. Thus, language tools, which are operated by participants may indicate membership in specific groups, communities, professions. We are interested in the communicative interaction between people with different status, representatives of different institutional categories, different cultures, and so on.

Chronotop features include time and place of a conversation, interview and other events. The time factor plays an important role in terms of eliminating redundancies in verifying the purpose of entry or exit from the country, creating the atmosphere of comfort or nervousness, and others. While the place of the discourse is usually the same - border crossing points.

Behavioral signs of a border guards' discourse include a kind of a ritual, which means a fixed sequence of actions, use of cliches and speech patterns, which help the participants realize their strategies and tactics. For example, direct or deliberate, too fast or unhurried answers with pauses and inclusions like ur, um, eh, and others may indicate the sincere or artificial answers.

A strategy is primarily a planning process of communication with account of particular conditions of linguistic intercourse and the feasibility of the plan [4, p. 32]. In our case, the typical pattern of communicative strategies in the professional discourse of an officer of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine and a foreigner includes the following components and discourse actions:

COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY IN THE PROFESSIONAL CONVERSATION OF AN OFFICER OF THE STATE BORDER GUARD SERVICE AND AN ALIEN

Thus, analyzing the process of verifying the first line of border control in order to identify victims of human trafficking, an officer of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine usually follows this order: questions about travel, travel documents, a person who may be a potential trafficker. Suchlike planning of a discourse together with the conditions of communication and implementation of the plan makes up a strategy. By its nature, it is flexible and dynamic, as it constantly changes according to the situation.

Let us scrutinize some text segments [1, p. 68] that make up a discourse which is the subject of our research. It is safe to say that the following speech tactics, i.e. planned consecutive speaking actions are effective means of implementation of the communicative strategy in the below mentioned situations.

Questions about travel:

Where do you come from? Where are you going to?

Why did you come to this country?

Where will you stay? Which hotel? What city?

What will you visit? Are you planning any sightseeing? Can you give me some details?

Do you have a booking for your hotel room? For how many nights? Has it already been paid for?

Who booked and paid for your flight ticket? How many? When? Where?

Whose car is this? How did you come to be travelling in this car? Where did the driver pick you up? Where is he/she driving you to?

Why are you travelling with this person? Who pays for the petrol? Are you sharing costs?

Where is your return ticket? When are you planning to return? From what airport?

How are you planning to travel back to your country?

Questions about travel documents:

What is your name? What is your place of birth?

Are you married or single? Do you have any children? Where are they?

What is your profession?

Where and when did you get your travel documents? What kind of document did you provide to get it?

Is this your signature on the document?

What is your passport number? (Very few people can answer this question, so the border guard should be suspicious when this is the case.)

Questions about the potential trafficker:

Who is travelling with you? What is her/his name? Where did you meet her/him? Where did you see her/him for the first time?

Do you know her/him well? Can you trust this person?

Why are you travelling with this person?

Where did she/he pick you up?

Is this her/his car?

Why does this person have your passport in her/his possession?

Why did she/he present your document at the border check?

A discourse, which involves potential child victims of human trafficking, needs more painstaking study. In suchlike situations vigilance should be drawn to the study of non-verbal discourse, first of all, these are signs of non-verbal behavior as shyness, fear, withdrawn, lack of eye contact, and so on. The logical order of questions that should be included in the discourse of the first line of the border control, can be represented as follows:

Where do you come from? Where are you going to?

Who are you travelling with? (parents, legal representative, relatives)

Where are your parents/legal representatives? When was the last time you saw your parents?

Where is the person you are travelling with? Who is responsible for you during your trip?

Where are you going to?

Who will take care of you after you finish travelling?

Who organized the travel?

Who paid for the travel?

When any indicators lead a border guard to the conclusion that a child is a (potential) victim or witness to the crime of trafficking, the questioning should cease in order not to endanger the child's protection and the quality of the further prosecution. This situation should be referred to the second-line border control.

Conclusions. Thus, the effective organization of a border control discourse requires logical planning of the professional communicative tactics that can provide the desired result at a certain stage of the strategic interaction between the officer of the State Border Guard Service and the state border-crossing subject. Using the above-mentioned linguistic resources in the border guards' discourse will ensure institutional mandate of the border guards without violating the rights of border crossing subjects, will help monitor thoroughly the lawfulness of the border-crossing and stop cross-border crime and in particular trafficking in human beings on time. A practical utility of this research consists in assistance to the English department instructors to select proper language tools for teaching cadets strategies and tactics of the border control.

Directions of the further investigations: border guards' discourse of the the second- line border control aimed at making extracts from the authentic texts, documents or audio texts.

List of references

1. Anti-trafficking training for border guards. Trainers' manual. - Warsaw: Frontex, 2012. - 130 p.

2. Aristov, S.A. Communicative and Cognitive Linguistics and Spoken Discourse / S. A. Aristov, I. P. Susov // Linguistic Journal: sel. scientific works. - Izhevsk, 1999. - Edition 1. - P. 5- 10.

3. Batsevych F. S. Fundamentals of Communicative Linguistics. - K: PC "Academy", 2004. - 344 p.

4. Issers O. S. Speech Impact: Textbook. - 2nd ed. - Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Culture, 2002. - 167 p.

5. Karasyk V. I. Discourse Categories // Language Personality: Social, Linguistic and Emotive Aspects: Col. Scientific works. - Volgograd; Saratov: Peremena, 1998. - 234 p.

6. Makarov M. L. Basics of Theory of Discourse. - Moscow: ITDGK Gnozys, 2003. - 280 p.

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