Pragmalinguistic Potential of Instructive Text

Abstract

An instruction is considered as a form of discursive values fixation in the pragmalinguistic aspect, which allows one to analyze the specifics of text formation. The results of a discursive analysis of instructions for cosmetic products, medical preparations, and household appliances are presented. Particular attention is paid to the description of the pragmalinguistic potential of instructive texts, represented by intentional plans of informativeness, prescriptiveness, beneficence. The distinctions of the representation of the indicated values are revealed using grammatical means expressing contextually determined shades of meanings. There is a review of the works in which the discussion of the type of speech influence in the instructions is raised. The novelty of the study consists in the consideration of the instructive text as a result of the discourse deployment, based on the factors of the addressee, addressant, subject area, time and place of resolution of the communicative situation, thereby revealing the specificity of the speech impact. The relevance of the study is due to the authors' appeal to the pragmalinguistic description of the text, which correlates with the anthropocentric approach in modern studies. The authors analyze in details the ways to implement direct and indirect motivation with the help of appropriate verbal forms, the features of the distribution of verbal forms containing important information about the way actions are performed and some syntactic constructions.

Keywords

• instruction
• pragmalinguistic potential
• informativity
• prescriptiveness
• beneficence
• speech impact