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. 

Keywords

• certificate of honor
• genre
• document
• written speech
• formal business style
• visual component
• structure
• language features