Vol 17, No 4 (36) (2022)
Studies of individual genres
Multimodal аnalysis in genre studies: Semiotics of the tourist booklet
Abstract
The paper discusses the complex genre of tourist booklet as a fixed type of multimodal text that serves in a communicative situation of promoting a tourist product. This genre is a semiotically complex phenomenon, which conveys information through different semiotic systems. The methodological issues are posed as to a perspective model of genre analysis that would take into account the multimodal nature of genres. The author points to major hindrances that an analyst faces when doing multimodal analysis. The study focuses on discovering mechanisms of the interplay between verbal and visual components on semantic and formal levels, as well as showing how the elements of multimodal analysis can be targeted at various genre parameters. The booklets (85 items) for the study were collected in 2007–2019 in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Poland, Russia and other countries. Methodologically, the paper draws on speech genre theory, semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and multimodal analysis. The claims are advanced that the tourist booklet has both obligatory and optional features, the visual component being obligatory. It is revealed that the colours of visuals can have factual and modal meanings embedded in them; photos convey precedent meanings; while using different semiotic codes, visual and verbal elements join the convergence relations and, thus, provide for genre coherence. The complex genre includes intertextual links between genres in its structure. These links may be of cross-code nature, since they are established between the elements of different semiotic systems, verbal and non-verbal. The conclusion is drawn that a consistent analytical model for multimodal genres has to be designed.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):250-261
250-261
Anathema: Transformation of the genre in the secular and postsecular eras
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to give an outline of those multilateral changes which the speech genre of anathema has undergone in Russian culture of the XIX–XXI centuries, and to shed light on the causes of these changes. Since anathema belongs to sacred performatives, whose pragmatic success directly depends on a set of metaphysical views peculiar to the Middle Ages, the fate of their entire subsystem in the conditions of global spiritual shifts of Modern and Postmodern eras is traced by means of an example of that genre. It is proved that, although anathema has not gone out of use in the Russian Church, it has undergone genre conservation in one direction and hybridization in another, as well as a serious theological rethinking. This latter process began after the excommunication of Leo Tolstoy (1901), the event that had an extraordinary resonance in the early twentieth century. In connection with it, “The Definition of the Holy Synod” is analyzed. It was the main performative which created that event and became a new milestone in the genre history of the Russian-Orthodox anathema. It is shown that this, as well as subsequent documents of that type, were determined in its genre specificity by the contemporary worldview context, the memory of the genre and a number of secondary factors.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):262-271
262-271
“Diplomatic” and “undiplomatic” in the genres of diplomatic discourse: based on metaphors of Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov used during press conferences and interviews on the special military operation in Ukraine
Abstract
The article presents the analysis of metaphors which go beyond the “diplomatic” speech used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov in the genres of interviews and press conferences after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that it is such transfers which accurately and vividly reflect the specific nature of Russia’s relations with the world community, primarily with the collective West, during this period. The aim of the work is to identify the linguocognitive and functional aspects of metaphorical transfers used by S. V. Lavrov in the texts under study. The research is based on 25 transcripts published from 24.02.22 to 16.06.22 on the official website mid.ru/ru/press_service/minister_speeches, press conferences (speeches and answers to questions) and interviews with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov. Basing on the complex methodology of semantic, discursive and linguocognitive analysis, the author proves that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, along with institutional transfers, actively uses metaphors which border on or go beyond the ”diplomatic”. With their help, S. V. Lavrov focuses on the negative assessment (official and personal – from ironic to angry) of the aggressive and provocative nature of such policy. This semantic and pragmatic dominant is reflected in the system of conceptual metaphors, where ”undiplomatic” transfers can be concentrated in one of the sections of the general linguistic cognitive matrix, occupy a dominant position in the implementation of the model, and also become a cognitive core involving transfers from different language models into its orbit.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):272-284
272-284
On the centenary of A. D. Sakharov: Sakharov’s discourse as science publicistics (identifying the speaker as the genre marker) E. R. Lassan
Abstract
A linguist’s interest toward Sakharov’s discourse is to a greater extent motivated by the question of what the characteristics of the text whose title (Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom) itself refers to cogitative practices of philosophical discourses are; the text that not only is polemical in relation to official discursive practices, but due to the personality of the author and the scientist, unites both scientific information and the political standpoint of the subject. For the analysis the author of the article chooses only one systemic text element, i.e. the manifestation of the speaker. Such a choice of the subject of the research is accounted for by the fact that, according to the author of the article, the representation of the author in nonfiction discourse is predetermined by the genre. The author’s analysis of Sakharov’s “Self” through its incorporation into communicative practices and relations with the “Other” stems from the “Self-concept”. As it is demonstrated in the article, the identification of the subject of the text in “Progress…” is relatable to the means of identifying the speaker in different types of discourse in terms of a genre; it correlates with the corresponding identification of the “Other”, which may be viewed as a marker of science publicistics. The author thinks that the analysis of ego markers of text may be effective when defining its genre.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):285-292
285-292
Genres in art
Possibilities and limitations of the psychological method in the analysis of a literary work (based on the analysis of L. S. Vygotsky’s psychological essay on “Light Breathing” by I. A. Bunin)
Abstract
The article includes an analytical review of different conceptual approaches and interpretations of I. A. Bunin’s novelette “Light breathing”, which have emerged during the decades after the publication of L. S. Vygotsky’s article on Bunin’s “Light breathing”. The most problematic and discussible questions are the following: the interconnection and interdependence of the form and content in the novelette; the contradictory image of the young high-school girl Olya Meshcherskaya; the culmination motive of the main character’s “failure”; the conflict; the symbolic meaning of the light breathing dominant motive and the novelette’s final. The authors of this article explain that the genre definition of L. S. Vygotsky’s article is a psychological essay, containing prevalently individual subjective and imaginative impressions and comments of the author on some elements of form and content of the literary work expounded in the emotional style. The authors also analyze Vygotsky’s version of the form and content conflict in Bunin’s novelette, note the vague differentiation of “earthly” basis of the novelette and the chain of the events in the novelette in their “natural” consequence, that leads, according to L. S. Vygotsky, to Olya Meshcherskaya’s drawing into the “earthbound haze”. Based on the speech analysis of Bunin’s novelette, the characteristics of the novelette’s main characters are redefined. Considering the writer’s intention, the authors correct Vygotsky’s perception of the light breathing dominant motive. The genre of L. S. Vygotsky’s article on Bunin’s “Light breathing” is defined as a formalistic psychological and physiological essay aiming at revealing the mechanism of literary creation impact on the reader. It is noted that the critic and psychologist presented the formal, physiological nature of this impact in a classical manner, by realizing the potential of a psychological essay genre, that is by emphasizing only one element of the literary creation and basing on it the general conclusion about ideological and artistic content of the novelette. However, it is necessary to remember that the literary creation as a whole exerts an influence on its reader by the other elements of its form, which are rhythm, tone, vocabulary, intonation, speech organization, physical, moral, esthetic points of view of the author-narrator in the novelette.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):293-301
293-301
The structure of flirtation as a speech genre in dialogues of Soviet intelligentsia: Composite genres and subgenres (based on plays by L. Zorin and V. Azernikov)
Abstract
The article studies speech behavior of the class of Soviet intelligentsia in communicative situations of flirting. The research is based on Soviet comedy plays of the 1960s–1970s: “Dobryaki”, “Entsiklopedisty”, “Tranzit”, “Pokrovskie vorota”, “Teatral’naya fantaziya” by Leonid Zorin and “Vozmozhny varianty” by Valentin Azernikov. The relevance of the topic is related to the increased interest ofmodern linguistics in the verbal means typical of romantic discourse in general and of the genre of flirting in particular. Authors of dramatic texts create a speech portrait of the characters and place them in different communicative situations using speech genres and their verbal means of actualization, appropriated for the social group to which the character belongs. The semantic content of the lexeme “flirt” includes the following main features: ambiguity, elements of comic genres and play. The article presents the subgenres of the speech genre of flirting: compliment, gratitude, hint, joke. The author describes the revealed verbal means which actualize the speech genre of flirting in the speech of the class of Soviet intelligentsia. They are complicated and ambiguous constructions, polysemous words, lexical repetitions, use of plural “you”, vocabulary with positive semantics in assessing moral qualities, precedent statements. Stage directions describing characters’ intonation, gestures and movements are treated as supporting means of modeling of the non-verbal behavior in flirting.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):302-310
302-310
Genres in philo- and ontogenesis
Referential features of narrative genres in the process of language acquisition
Abstract
The paper regards the process of the development of several features of the narrative speech genre in the discourse field of Russian culture while learning Russian as a second language. Referentiality in general linguistic sense is an area concerning naming of objects and characters by language means. In this paper we analyse the problems of the referential choice (what factors influence the speaker’s choice of a referential expression) and anaphora resolution (how the listener/reader binds an anaphoric pronoun to a coreferential noun phrase). The main goal of our paper is to study referential features of narratives produced by foreign students acquiring Russian as a second language (RSL), compared with adult Russian speakers and children acquiring Russian as a first language (RFL). Also, we describe referential mistakes made by RSL learners. The analysis of the data demonstrates that the main referential features (abilities to make the right referential choices, form anaphoric chains, etc.) are related to the age-specific cognitive development and do not depend on the native language. Both groups of adults show similar patterns in using nouns and pronouns for the introduction or reintroduction of a referent and for the topic maintenance, and build continuous anaphoric chains. Particular anaphoric mistakes of RSL learners are related to the level of their grammar skills and differ from the mistakes made by RFL children: while children’s mistakes base on the cognitive factor, RSL students’ mistakes are mostly grammatical.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):311-318
311-318
Reviews. Chronicle
The religious style as a system of genres (Review of the book: Itskovich T. V. A Genre System of the Religious Style [Text]: monograph / T. V. Itskovich. – Moscow, FLINTA, 2021. – 400 p.)
Abstract
The review is a response to the publication of T. V. Itskovich’s monograph “Genre system of the religious style”. The author of the book presents an original view on the functional religious style as a system of genres and gives its multidimensional description. The relevance of the research is justified by the need for a comprehensive linguistic study of the religious style as part of the paradigm of functional varieties of the modern Russian literary language and the classification of genres of the religious style on a single basis. In the monograph, its author, basing on an integrated approach which combines communicative-pragmatic and categorical-textual aspects of the study of religious texts, taking into account the cultural-historical and textual genesis of religious genres, establishes the constructive principle of the religious style, gives a scientific description of the system of religious genres and its proto-genre basis, reveals the compositional-thematic and speech originality of religious genre types and their varieties as well as the core and periphery of the genre field of religious style. The study is based on the texts of the liturgical and non-liturgical spheres of Orthodox religious communication in Russian and Church Slavonic, selected by the author on the basis of the tradition of their use in the religious activities of the Church and the individual as well as the frequency of their use in modern religious communication.
Speech genres. 2022;17(4 (36)):319-322
319-322