Model for Describing of Speech Genre “Spiritual Essay”: Basic Parameters and Implementation (Theolinguistic Aspect)

Abstract

A parametric model for describing the “essay” speech genre functioning in the church-religious style, which is called spiritual on the basis of its intentional, thematic-content, illocutionary and other features, is presented. The author suggests using the following parameters in the analysis of an essay with spiritual (religious-Christian) content: addresser, addressee, spiritual and religious intentions of the author, spiritual and religious thematic basis of content, composition, argumentation, used Christian images, tactics and strategies, representative linguistic stylistic means, intertextual content. The implementation of this model is shown on the basis of the text «“The effect of proximity” in history and everyday life» written by Archimandrite Makarii (Veretennikov). A spiritual essay is defined as a genre of a church-religious style: a text-reflection created by a clergyman and addressed to a representative of Christian culture, reflecting the personal experiences and impressions of the author. In the final part of the work, it is stated: the spiritual essay is realized as an independent genre and becomes an element of the structure of another genre, for example, writing, diary, etc., that is, it is embodied as an intragenre. The collection of spiritual essays by Archimandrite Savva (Mazuko) “Love and Emptiness” is used for research. The comparative analysis is designed to accurately and convincingly show the specifics of a spiritual essay.

Keywords

• theolinguistics
• speech genre
• essay
• spiritual essay
• spiritual and religious intentions
• religiononym