Key words and phrases: situational replica; speech act theory; communicative situation; pragmatics

The research considers functioning of situational replicas in a fiction text. The author reveals pragmatic and syntactic potential of female characters’ situational replicas in Virginia Woolf's novels, analyses influence of a communicative situation on situational replicas. The research objective includes identifying the basic syntactic features and pragmatic functions of situational replicas. The researcher introduces a preliminary definition of a situational replica and reveals situational replica's function as a conversation representative, which constitutes scientific originality of the study (on the basis of the works by A. Wierzbicka, N. D. Arutiunova, Lakoff R.).

 The research findings are as follows: 

1. Among indirect and inderect speech acts in Virginia Woolf's novels the majority are expressives (30%), followed by representatives (26%), directives (14%), and the less frequent interrogatives (10%), vocatives (10%), and performatives (8%). In a number of cases (21.5%) the selected replicas can be attributed to several types simultaneously.

The closest context can report certain information, e.g. serve as an implication of the dialogue, nominate aspects of the communicative situation, indicate the meta-language parameters of replicas (including informing the speech manner of the female character). The replicas can also act as a representative of the dialogue.

2. Structural and grammatical analysis has shown that the general tendencies of the literary use of the situational replicas in female characters speech are: the predominance of simple syntactic constructions, such as minimal interjective replicas; simple sentences often serve to create syntactic parallelism; the least frequent are complex sentences with different types of conjunctive and non-conjunctive links.

The data obtained as a result of the study expand the understanding of the situational replicas, and can also be used in the pragmalinguistic analysis of the text. The author sees the prospects for further research in a more detailed study of the pragmatic component of the replicas in relation to their graphics, as well as in the comparative structural-grammatical analysis on the material of live speech.