M.M. Bakhtin’s Genre Theory As A Key To Teaching Linguistic Text Analysis

Abstract

The article is devoted to the search for new approaches to teaching the discipline "Fundamentals of linguistic analysis of text". The article describes the experience of using M.M. Bakhtin’s teaching about primary and secondary speech genres as an operational method for teaching this discipline in university. The hypothesis about the universal countable set of genre-forming text formants is proposed. The hypothesis is being tested with the use of the logical-deductive method by comparing various approaches to the analysis of text, including approaches based on M.M. Bakhtin’s works. As the material for the analysis, the author uses the texts of classical Russian literature of the 19th - 20th centuries, the texts of Russian folklore, political and academic Russian rhetoric. The data of Russian colloquial speech was used as a source of material of primary speech genres. The material is being analyzed with the use of observation and experimental methods. As a result of the study, presence of a correlation between the genre-forming formants of text and primary speech genres and some patterns of such a correlation were revealed. As an effective measure of text analysis, the category of producing speech genre is proposed for use. A set of minimum genre characteristics is established that are retained by the producing speech genre after it has joined the derivative speech genre.