Typical Grammatical Peculiarities of Formal and Business Writing in the Russian and Swedish Languages

Abstract

The article deals with comparative analysis of the Russian-Swedish parallel texts of the Convention between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden about mutual assistance in the fight against the violation of the tax legislation (Avtal mellan konungariket Sveriges regering och Ryska federationens regering om msesidigt bistnd vid bekmpning av vissa fiskala brott). The Swedish and Russian texts differ immensely in their lexical and grammatical structure. The reason for these discrepancies is rooted, firstly, in typological distinctions between Russian and Swedish as languages of different groups and, secondly, in those processes of conscious simplification and regulation that the Swedish Language of formal business communication have been affected by during the last fifty years particularly in relation to clear language policy (klarsprk). In spite of some innovations the Russian Language of formal business communication in many ways continues to be traditional enough. The article is focused on a narrow range of issues relating to differences in grammatical structure of a sentence and prevailing nominal structures in the Russian text as compared with the verb oriented Swedish one. The juxtaposition of parallel texts and further systematization of differences between the Russian and Swedish Languages of formal and business communication makes it possible to give a comparative characteristic of this functional style existing in Russia and Sweden. The research is carried out by means of the continuous sampling method using the method of linguistic description to characterize utterance structure in grammar. Research results can be used in courses on a comparative typology of Russian and Swedish, stylistics, the theory and practice of translation.