Schools and approaches defining the distinctive features of speech forms

This paper contains an overview of schools and approaches concerned with so-called speech forms in Russian and Western linguistics. Ultimately, the overview aims at detecting the distinctive features of speech forms. The research data comprises scientific works in stylistics, grammar, theory and typology of text and specialised works on speech forms. Among linguistic schools, the following are considered: structural linguistics, post-structural linguistics, tagmemics, systemic-functional linguistics and so-called text linguistics in the sense of German macrostylistics. The methodology of study is based on an analysis of academic literature indicating speech form features considered relevant by the researchers, a comparison of those features and a synthesis of the distinctive features of the object of study. No strict correspondence between the schools and the approaches to speech form definition used by the particular researchers has been detected. In light of the question of speech form essence, it has been tolerated to abstract speech forms from their language and text realisation. We do not regard the typical language realisations of speech forms as their distinctive features, finding it advantageous to base the study of these realisations on particular language material. The treatment of speech forms regardless of their purpose-motivated choice in a particular instance of text production proves that they have an objective character as thought units. The function of these as speech units is to arrange the presentation of the subject content of a text. Conversely, the structuring function is, in our view, nonessential to speech forms. In addition, we have discarded the two- and multilevel speech form typologies as ascribing the notional and functional characteristics of speech forms to different structures. This comparison of the existing approaches has determined the following distinctive features of a speech form: being a speech and thought unit in its essence, its structural and logical character, its sign nature (or semiotic character), its manifestation in inner text structure as the logical development of the text subject (intratextuality) and subordinacy of its structuring function.