Vol 18, No 4 (40) (2023)
Articles
The text of the certificate of honour as a genre of writing
Abstract
The article proves that the text of the certificate of honor is a genre of official business style written discourse. The relevance of the work is connected, on the one hand, with the duration of the existence and high occurencence of this genre in the system of written communication, on the other hand, with the lack of special works related to its description. The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the genre features and linguistic features of the texts of certificates of honor. The following methods were used: observation, functional analysis of language units, description. The article draws attention to the importance of characterizing the visual component of the letter of honor – the textual “environment”, which includes both the actual text (calls, slogans, statements) and visual images (portraits, symbols) and reflects the time of creation of the award document. The article studies the structure, genre and language features of the texts of certificates of honor focusing on the analysis of permanent and variable elements of the document. The authors note the laconism of formulations, clichéd phrases, the predominance of abstract nouns, the active use of abbreviations in the texts of certificates of honor. It is concluded that the certificate of honor as an official business document requires a certain culture of formatting. Its author must know the language norms and the rules for compiling texts of this genre.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):316-329
316-329
Genre determination of grammatical expression of textual chronotope in regional documents of the 18th century
Abstract
The article reveals several current issues of documental linguistics and genre theory – grammatical means of expressing/actualizing textual chronotope in the 18th cent. official documents from the Archive Fund of the Mikhailovsky Stanichny ataman of the State Archive of the Volgograd Region, which are described with the procedure of genre related analysis. By comparing organization and grammatical representation of text chronotope in administrative, informative and registration documents, there was revealed a tendency for typological genre implications defined by the document properties and the character of its narrative structure. In most sources, the reference point relative to which the time of recorded actions and events is determined was established as being explicated: the date of the document is coordinated with the associated verb forms in a performative function. In the texts with a narrative element, verb forms correlate with this reference point or enter into temporal relations with each other, which might actualize in some syntactic constructions: complex sentences with a subordinate clause of time, condition, an explanatory object clause, etc. Although the set of forms varies in the documents, some corresponding regulations were noted in administrative documents as three time spans – preceding, simultaneous and subsequent actions (in military certificates), in informing ones – two time spans – preceding and simultaneous (in reports) or preceding and subsequent (in fairy tales). In non-narrative documents (receipts, statements), single actions or a number of single actions are recorded, they are loosely interconnected by temporary relationships or these relationships are not explicated. Such actions are viewed as belonging to the same time span, grammatical means of temporal characteristics of actions are monotonous.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):330-336
330-336
Emotive metaphorics in the genres of diplomatic discourse: A dynamic aspect (based on the texts of the press conference and interview of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in 2023)
Abstract
The article presents the analysis of emotive metaphors used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov in the genres of interview and press conference in 2023. The research is a continuation of an earlier similar study based on the materials of 2022. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that these genres of diplomatic discourse, combining the properties of status-role and relatively personal communication, allow us to identify the aspects of the use of emotive figurative means in achieving the main goal of diplomacy – in approving the course of the country’s foreign policy in the context of a consistent escalation of the “hybrid” (including informational) war of the “collective West” against the Russian Federation in 2023. The purpose of the study is to identify the functional aspects of emotive transfers used by S. V. Lavrov in the studied texts in the dynamic aspect (in comparison with similar transfers in 2022). The research is based on 46 transcripts of the two genres, published from 01.01.23 to 06.06.23 on the official website mid.ru (mid.ru/ru/press_service/minister_speeches). Based on the complex methodology of semantic, discursive, linguocognitive analysis, it was found that in 2023, as in 2022, the Minister regularly uses emotive metaphors in order to draw attention to the most acute and significant, from the state point of view, problems of international relations (escalation of tension in the world, “hybrid” war against Russia, the main source of which is the aggressive policy of the “collective” West”), as well as to express the attitude towards them (in status-role and personal aspects). To solve these problems, S. V. Lavrov not only continues to systematically use reduced, ”undiplomatic” hyphenations (“vulgarisms”), but also more actively attracts bookoriented (“rhetorical”) metaphors. The cognitive and pragmatic functions of emotive metaphorics are most fully realized, as in 2022, in a system of conceptual models, the composition, structure of which and the main trends in development in 2023 are directly related to the solution of topical political and ideological problems.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):337-348
337-348
The category of dialogicality as realization of novel genre potential
Abstract
The category of discursive dialogicality is considered, represented in a literary text that exists on the border of two social discourses – literature and law. The semantic domain of the interdiscourse, as a heterogeneous linguosociocultural space in which two different discourses interact, is open, mobile and dialogically conditioned. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the cooperative model of dialogical interaction of the stated discourses, i.e. such a model that allows a recipient to bring together two worldviews in the recipient’s mind: legal and artistic. The subject of the research is the implementation of the category of discursive dialogicality in a literary text with a dominant legal storyline, as well as the peculiarity of linguistic means and speechmaking techniques relevant for a social novel – the genre type that allows to reveal the inner dialogicality of formally monological statements, to expose social positions and worldviews. The category in question unites hierarchically organized types: pragma-dialogue (first level), auto-dialogue and dialogue-game (second level) which find expression at the intra-textual, extra-textual and intertextual levels of meaning generation. The category of discursive dialogicality in the novel “Bleak House” by Ch. Dickens is a complex system of several types of dialogicality in which the reader’s personality is formed. The convergence of two conceptual areas in the recipient’s mind – artistic and legal – is carried out at the level of integration of linguistic markers of legal discourse and units of artistic text, cooperation of conventional and individual author’s techniques of artistic expression with elements of official business style. In fact, novel genre displays the category of dialogicality in all its diversity.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):349-357
349-357
The genre of prayer in the diary discourse of Leo Tolstoy
Abstract
The article is aimed to consider the genre of prayer presented in the diaries of Leo Tolstoy. An analysis of the entries reveals that over the course of his life Tolstoy recorded several dozen prayers he made up. The article examines recorded appeals to God in syntactic, semantic and pragmatic terms. The research uses methods of description, conceptual and pragmatic analysis. The study reveals that Tolstoy violates the accepted canons, modelling an individual appeal to God. Tolstoy’s discourse is dominated by short prayers, which is a consequence of the addressee’s pragmatic intentions: to be concise, humble, not to ask for anything. The article establishes that the key axiological dominant for Tolstoy is love, with which he identifies God. In his appeals to God, Tolstoy asks for firm faith, hope, and a calm conscience. A large group of Tolstoy’s prayers has a situationally oriented nature. The imperatives of behavior are formulated in the prayers. The article concludes that prayer in Tolstoy’s discourse becomes a means of an individual programme of self-improvement. Tolstoy’s prayer is chamberlike, regular in nature. The addressee of the appeal is God, and often not personified, but as emptiness, something, a moral principle. He defines the role of the addressee through the nominations of an obedient son, servant, worker, messenger of the Almighty, who must humbly accept everything that God wants. The article identifies that Tolstoy’s prayers are heterogeneous in their intensions: a request, a thanksgiving, a statement. According to its axiological content and intentional vector, Tolstoy’s prayer fully corresponds to the Christian ideology, expressed in humility and love.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):358-364
358-364
Subject plot symbolism in allegories (on the material of mediaeval Armenian fables)
Abstract
The paper deals with edifications expressed in Armenian fables of the XII–XIII centuries. These narratives describe common situations of overcoming serious difficulties, interrelations between authorities and people, and paradoxical unpredictability of existence. Three main topics presented in the narratives have been analyzed – the attitudes to the world, to authorities and to human character. The general principles of the world-view comprise loyalty to one’s own people, understanding the connection of cause and consequence, and emphasizing responsibility of one’s actions. The attitude to authorities is mainly critical. The fables show that power makes people cruel, but sober-minded shrewd people may win or at least remain alive. In times of war people should put aside their criticism and defend their country. The narratives about human nature describe envy and stupidity, and victims of fraud are not given sympathy to. The main inferences of the mediaeval Armenian fables may be summarized as fundamental ethical and utilitarian prescriptions of behavior – a realistic evaluation of complicated situations, impermissibility of credulousness, rejection of futile attempts to change the world, and loyalty to the principles of estimable life. The content of the fables reflects universal observations as expressed in similar narratives of other cultures, but has a vivid originality which manifests itself in the appeal to survive in almost unbearable circumstances.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):365-374
365-374
Speech genre of consumer reviews and its transformation in the digital age (based on reviews of doctors)
Abstract
We analyze the influence of new technologies of communicative interaction on the transformation of the speech genre of consumer reviews on the Internet. The research is based on reviews of doctors and medical services taken from the websites of specialized online publications and forums. The author compares modern Internet-reviews of the consumer with the genre-prototype – reviews in the Book of Complaints and Suggestions. The research determines the main direction of the genre transformation, connected with the communication channel and the change in the position of the addressee: the Internet review acquires all the properties of a public media genre, since its addressee becomes a mass one. The changes also affect the image of the author: access to an unlimited audience determines the transformation of the text towards the mass media and advertising discourses with their basic functions of influencing and regulating the behavior and way of thinking of the mass addressee. The communicative-pragmatic study of the review is based on one of the essential genre-forming features – the intention of the addressee, which is expressed, first of all, in a positive or negative assessment of the medical service. The study reveals structural-semantic models of two types of reviews and analyses evaluation tactics in the texts of reviews. It is indicated that there exist communicative and legal risks due to the public nature of the negative feedback distributed on the network. The author notes pragmatic characteristics of a positive consumer feedback, which bring it closer to the advertising text.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):375-385
375-385
Latin graphemes Z and V in Internet genres
Abstract
The article compares the use of graphemes Z and V in written Russian Internet mass media of various genres: traditional (articles of Internet news portals and sites of regional governments), communicative (comments, messages, posts on social networks), marketing (names of brands, advertisements, event announcements, promotional posts) of two time periods, the watershed for which was the political event of February 24, 2022, which became known in the language under the name “military special operation in Ukraine”. We observe the dynamics of change in the semantics of Latin graphemes Z and V: the intensification of these letters continues the tradition of interaction between Cyrillic and Latin as a mechanism for creating occasionalisms and a means of creating expression, on the other hand, reflects such a linguistic phenomenon as the expansion of the semantics of a letter, its acquisition of ideological significance and turning to it as a tool in information war. In some cases, expressive graphemics becomes an effective means of implementing the genre of patriotic appeal, in others, it is used as a tool for expressing civic position, attitude to today’s political events. In the course of the work, general scientific methods of observation, description and comparison, as well as the method of contextual analysis were used.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):386-393
386-393
Is language a system of signs? (Lenin, Saussure and the theory of hieroglyphics)
Abstract
This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: – how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s–50s? – what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of sign? We will propose here an apparently narrow angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a ”theory of hieroglyphics” (or symbols), therefore a type of bourgeois idealist theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about E. Mach, and which was upheld for a time by Plekhanov. But thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century about the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–50s seems entirely to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):394-405
394-405
The genre with a thousand faces: The perspective of the philologist Vladimir S. Vakhrushev
Abstract
This article presents an interdisciplinary conception of genre proposed by the Russian philologist from Balashov, Professor Vladimir Serafimovich Vakhrushev. The feasibility of this task can be mainly seen in two aspects. First of all, Vakhrushev conceives genre as an ideal model generating versatile phenomena not only of discursive, but also of social, cultural, and historical processes. His broad understanding of genre can contribute to the comprehension of the specific speech genres, studied within the specific disciplines isolated so far by their primary tasks, as the elements of a coherent macro system “Genre – Text – Man – Society – Culture – Nature”. Within this macro system, the genres of verbal texts appear to be the structures similar to those of other types, existing elsewhere beyond the realm of art or everyday speech, namely, in nature, history and society. According to V. Vakhrushev, verbal genres and the genres of natural and sociohistorical phenomena share a number of intrinsic properties which are determined by the global ecological law of their adaptation to the ever-changing environment. Secondly, this publication is timed to coincide with Professor Vakhrushev’s 90th anniversary, which falls on September 2022, thus providing a motive for presenting his theoretical legacy to a wider community of linguists, literary scholars, cultural studies scholars, perhaps sociologists, historians, and natural scientists to engage them in a critical discussion. Researchers of speech genres and literary studies may be particularly interested in Vakhrushev’s phenomenological definition of genre and in the ways he is reasoning the isomorphism and the presence of analogies between text genres and the genres of other life forms, such as biology, daily social life and history.
Speech genres. 2023;18(4 (40)):406-412
406-412