Speech Genres Research Articles

ПЕТИЦІЯ ЯК МОВЛЕННЄВИЙ ЖАНР УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ПРЕЗИДЕНТСЬКОГО ДИСКУРСУ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the system of speech genres of modern Ukrainian presidential discourse. The study of presidential discourse as one of the varie-ties of political discourse is carried out in a communicative and pragmatic aspect. This involved taking into account the features of communicative interaction of political in-teraction participants, selected communication strategies and tactics, and identifying communicative intentions. One of the new genres of Ukrainian presidential discourse is considered – a petition to the President of Ukraine. Petitions of citizens to the President for 2015-2023 were analyzed and the structural-semantic and communicative-pragmatic features of this genre were determined. The remote and mediated nature of petitions as a genre of electronic communication between the head of state and citizens of Ukraine is taken into account. The main communicative strategies of speakers in petitions and the specifi cs of the President’s communicative behavior as addressee and respondent are characterized. Attention is focused on linguistic means of achieving the perlocutionary eff ect in the speech genre of the petition. The communicative intention of encouragement is defi ned as the main one in the petition, which determines the implementation of speech acts of off er and request. The two-component structure of the petition was considered and the speaker’s own appeal and the addressee’s response in communicative interaction with the participation of an indirect mass addressee were analyzed. The structural elements of the President’s response as a component of the speech genre of the petition are considered and its performative nature is determined. The problems of achieving perlocutionary eff ect in petitions and low eff ectiveness in political discourse are characterized.

The linguistic and didactic potential of a culinary recipe in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language

The primary challenge in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language is to identify language units, speech genres, or text types relevant for use in the educational process to develop the communicative and linguistic-cultural competence of learners. Given the significance of gastronomic culture in the modern world, a culinary recipe can serve as a valuable source of information about national cultural traditions and material for developing communication and intercultural skills. The article explores the concept of a ʼculinary recipeʼ and the specific characteristics that make it a distinct type of text with potential applications in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. It argues that the linguistic and didactic potential of a culinary recipe is grounded in its features, such as compact size, the presence or potential use of visual aids for information presentation, a typical and repeated text structure, and optimal lexical content in terms of frequency of usage and stylistic neutrality. This content includes background and non-equivalent vocabulary, borrowings, internationalisms, hyperonyms, hyponyms, words related to product names, dishware, and other kitchen utensils, gustatory and deverbative culinary adjectives, as well as culinary verbs and verbs related to food processing. The article also emphasizes the presence of typical structural models in word combinations and sentences. Special attention is given to the appropriateness and effectiveness of studying dish names and processing productive grammatical models, particularly word combinations. It highlights the importance of avoiding categorical imperatives in language materials and suggests processing culinary instructions primarily with the verb form in the 1st person plural. In conclusion, the author recommends the integration of culinary recipes into Ukrainian language classes for foreign language learners, particularly for students at proficiency levels approaching A2–B1.

THE USE OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH TO STUDENTS

Statement of the problem. Against the background of the abolition of Russian culture in European countries, we believe that Russian students need to develop general cultural and foreign language communicative competence on the best examples of world culture. British literature of the 20th century is directly connected with the events of life of the previous time and is represented by the works of such writers as J. Galsworthy, A. Conan Doyle, R. Kipling, W. Maugham, O. Wilde, H. G. Wells, B. Shaw, etc. British literature of the XX century is realist and modernist works, fantasy, detectives and science fiction represent the "golden age" of its heyday and reflects the changes taking place in society, the search for eternal truths and defense of traditional values for all. The purpose of the study is to develop the foreign language reading competence of students-trainee foreign language teachers of the 1st and 2nd years using the works of twentieth-century British literature. Results. The impact of the content form of literature on the worldview, attitudes, values of students is great and occurs regardless of the attitude towards social institutions. The impact occurs at conscious and unconscious levels. In pragmalinguistic terms, the speech genre of fiction narrative implements communicative strategies. Reading is a thinking process, which is managed indirectly through text selection, preparation of pre- and post-text tasks, and control of reading comprehension. The analysis of the results of the ascertaining stage revealed an insufficient level of knowledge of 20th century British literature in the experimental and control groups of students - future teachers of a foreign language. In this connection the experimental program aimed at the optimization of the process of teaching English and increasing the level of knowledge of the British literature of the XX century among students was developed. Conclusion. On the whole we came to the conclusion that the work with the content form of the British literature of the XX century represents a special culture of relationship with the students, contributes to the formation of values, independence, high motivation for cognitive activity. It is important to provide the assimilation of British literature of the XX century on the basis of the analysis of the biography of the writer, the basics of literary criticism, the impact of stories and the author's idea on human life.

EXPRESSIVE LOVE VOCABULARY IN THE LETTERS OF TATIANA AND ONEGIN

The crucial aspect of constructing a fictional text lies in identifying linguistic clichés and speech patterns that reflect the speaker’s thinking, behaviour, and cultural background. This is particularly important when exploring the love theme description in A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” and examining expressive and semantic speech mechanisms. The research aims to consider the techniques of using expressive language units of love context in the letters of the novel “Eugene Onegin”. The research offers novel insights into the extensive use of love vocabulary and illogical thematic organization in Onegin’s letter, providing a contrasting expressive context and character portrayal. It highlights the absence of letter etiquette and explores the significance of love letters in fiction. To achieve the research objectives, various methods, such as descriptive, content analysis, and comparative approaches, were employed. The research findings highlighted that comprehending linguistic clichés and speech standards, specifically their semantics and expressive nature, is essential for readers to grasp and fully immerse themselves in the depicted reality within the text. The love lexicon of the textual letters of the characters in A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” is no longer one of the elements reproduced and quoted in the text, but has become an important structural tool for describing the theme of love in the fiction text. The significance of the linguistic organization of the fragments representing the letters of Tatiana and Onegin is noted by Pushkin already at the level of the way they are included in the overall text. These ways include the introduction of the letters by a separate title, provided that neither chapters nor stanzas of the novel have titles, as well as the presence of special segments of text in the lyrical digressions, indicating a certain singularity of the letters. In addition, it has been determined that in the novel the synthesis of love vocabulary and expression has been developed in a linguistic-genre context of a higher level: the novel is permeated with the properties of lyrical poetry. In the composition of the text, such properties have found a clear form in the two most representative speech genres: in the love letter and the author’s multi-thematic and multidimensional reflections on love in the lyrical digressions. The practical significance lies in the use of the research results by scholars, as well as specialists in the field of linguistics and literary studies.

Discursive Strategies of Orthodox Discourse

The theoretical foundations of the study of preaching as a genre of religious Orthodox discourse require the definition of the basic concepts of the communicative and discursive analysis of modern Orthodox preaching and form the basis for its conduct. However, for practical analysis, it is also necessary to develop a research model that covers the fundamental principles of analysis and its
 tools. The problem of communicative and discursive strategies and tactics in linguistics has been studied quite extensively, however, the lack of a unified classification of them, as well as clear and unambiguous definitions, does not yet make
 it possible to provide a complete classification of them.
 The article is devoted to the analysis of the implementation of the maindiscursive strategies. Attention is paid to the discursive strategy of narrative, as well as to the contacting and informing strategies that are basic for Orthodox preaching and are present in all its genres. The study examines the main strategies that are the basic concepts of communicative and discursive analysis. The
 goal of any communicative strategy is to correct the addressee's world model, therefore, within the framework of the strategy, the addressee selects certain psychological parameters, identifies the necessary changes in their values and ways to achieve these goals.
 The purpose of the article is to analyze all the strategies that are the basic concepts of the communicative and discursive analysis of the studied Orthodox sermon. As part of the study, the sermons of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of All Russia were used and analyzed.
 Conclusions: communicative interaction in Orthodox discourse receives adequate implementation in the discursive strategy, which we understand as the global communicative intention of the speaker within a certain discourse and the speech objectification of this intention. Discursive tactics are one or more speech actions that ensure the implementation of the chosen discursive strategy of the speaker and the deployment of a certain speech genre.
 The results of the research conducted in this article can be used in research and teaching activities related to the study of various types of discourses.

Emotion vs conflict-generating communication in a hybrid media environment

The research is devoted to the phenomenon of emotional and conflict-generating communication. Pragmatic information was chosen as the object of study, which is based on the intention of implication, the hidden intention of the addresser. The subject of the study is special, provocative speech genres, regarded as tools for presenting pragmatic information, their system and typology. Provocative discourse is considered in the work as a special type of intentional discourse, and provoking is understood as the infection of the interlocutor with the real or imaginary (skillfully imitated) intentional state of the speaker. Provoking, therefore, is a typical example of emotional contagion, emotiogenicity. The material for the analysis was mass communication texts; the body of the study consisted of the headlines of direct mail advertising texts. Two basic provocative genre strategies - confession and concern - are identified, each of which includes, as identifiable elements, the (elementary) provocative genres of confession, presentation, maxim, demonstrative, complaint, advice, notation, reproach, provocative question, propheseme.

THE GENRE OF “LAW”: SYNTAX PARAMETERS (BASED ON THE CIVIL AND CRIMINAL CODES OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY)

Laws are classifi ed as texts of offi cial business style, which is used in the fi eld of offi cial public relations. Within the framework of the offi cial business style, the communicative infl uence on the participants of communication is carried out in a directive form with the help of regulatory documents – laws, prescriptions, instructions, regulations, etc. The general features that defi ne the offi cial business style are stylistic neutrality, impersonality, concreteness and objectivity. Regardless of the specifi c genre, they are all characterized by a high frequency of professional terminology, brevity and standardization of the presentation and structuring of the material. The syntactic organization of the genre of “law” in German is analyzed based on the material of the Civil and Criminal Codes of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has been confi rmed that this speech genre belongs to the offi cial-business style with typical features of a generalized representation of events, an instructional-informative type of text, a neutral presentation and a specifi c language design. The offi cialbusiness- style is characterized by saturation with professional terminology, brevity of the presentation, standardized form and structuring of the material. A genre is defi ned as a thematically, compositionally, and stylistically established type of messages, united by a number of characteristic repetitive features. The law as a genre is characterized by a set of linguistic and non-linguistic features that are reproduced and repeated in the laws of various types of German law. This concerns the structuring of the text of the law, the repertoire of specifi c designations – articles, paragraphs, paragraphs and sentences, fonts, as well as purely linguistic representation at the lexical and syntactic levels and the specifi city of stylistic devices. Typical syntactic features of the text of German laws are the presence of a large number of verbs, substantives, prepositional groups, modal verbs (können, dürfen, sollen), passive constructions, etc. These linguistic units contribute to the condensation of the text and allow avoiding complex sentences, and clearly convey the modality of permission or prohibition. Other structural features of laws are the productive use of anaphora, defi nitions, and syntactic parallelism, which form a special architecture of the “law” genre and distinguish it from related genres of legal discourse. Possible further research is the analysis of the lexical features of the genre of “law”. Key words: law, genre, offi cial-business functional style, German language, syntax.

Многоликий жанр в концепции филолога В. С. Вахрушева

This article presents an interdisciplinary conception of genre proposed by the Russian philologist from Balashov, Professor Vladimir Serafimovich Vakhrushev. The feasibility of this task can be mainly seen in two aspects. First of all, Vakhrushev conceives genre as an ideal model generating versatile phenomena not only of discursive, but also of social, cultural, and historical processes. His broad understanding of genre can contribute to the comprehension of the specific speech genres, studied within the specific disciplines isolated so far by their primary tasks, as the elements of a coherent macro system “Genre – Text – Man – Society – Culture – Nature”. Within this macro system, the genres of verbal texts appear to be the structures similar to those of other types, existing elsewhere beyond the realm of art or everyday speech, namely, in nature, history and society. According to V. Vakhrushev, verbal genres and the genres of natural and sociohistorical phenomena share a number of intrinsic properties which are determined by the global ecological law of their adaptation to the ever-changing environment. Secondly, this publication is timed to coincide with Professor Vakhrushev’s 90th anniversary, which falls on September 2022, thus providing a motive for presenting his theoretical legacy to a wider community of linguists, literary scholars, cultural studies scholars, perhaps sociologists, historians, and natural scientists to engage them in a critical discussion. Researchers of speech genres and literary studies may be particularly interested in Vakhrushev’s phenomenological definition of genre and in the ways he is reasoning the isomorphism and the presence of analogies between text genres and the genres of other life forms, such as biology, daily social life and history.

Речевой жанр отзыва потребителя и его трансформация в цифровую эпоху (на материале отзывов о докторах)

We analyze the influence of new technologies of communicative interaction on the transformation of the speech genre of consumer reviews on the Internet. The research is based on reviews of doctors and medical services taken from the websites of specialized online publications and forums. The author compares modern Internet-reviews of the consumer with the genre-prototype – reviews in the Book of Complaints and Suggestions. The research determines the main direction of the genre transformation, connected with the communication channel and the change in the position of the addressee: the Internet review acquires all the properties of a public media genre, since its addressee becomes a mass one. The changes also affect the image of the author: access to an unlimited audience determines the transformation of the text towards the mass media and advertising discourses with their basic functions of influencing and regulating the behavior and way of thinking of the mass addressee. The communicative-pragmatic study of the review is based on one of the essential genre-forming features – the intention of the addressee, which is expressed, first of all, in a positive or negative assessment of the medical service. The study reveals structural-semantic models of two types of reviews and analyses evaluation tactics in the texts of reviews. It is indicated that there exist communicative and legal risks due to the public nature of the negative feedback distributed on the network. The author notes pragmatic characteristics of a positive consumer feedback, which bring it closer to the advertising text.

МОТИВАЦИОННОЕ ПИСЬМО С ПОЗИЦИЙ ПОЛИПАРАДИГМАЛЬНОГО ПОДХОДА

The article focuses on the study of motivation letter which is a personalized document created by an applicant for a competitive position in business and academic environment. The aim of the article is to present a comprehensive interpretation of motivational writing at the intersection of different research concepts and communicative practices. The empirical base was made up of motivation letters prepared by American, British and Russian applicants for admission to various educational programs, as well as recommendations offered by universities on how to compose such texts. The main research method was a polyparadigm approach including discursive, linguocultural, narratological, genre, linguistic and stylistic aspects. The results of the study demonstrate that the motivation letter is an imperative and initial speech genre, with a hierarchical — from bottom to top — vector of relations between the author and the addressee. The content of the message reflects the development of professional and personal qualities of the applicant in a retrospective-perspective manner, whereas the form is determined by a set of structural elements (greeting, exposition, main part, conclusion). The article considers the peculiarities of lexical nominations and grammatical constructions used to express the meanings which are significant for the participants of communication. It proves that the techniques of storytelling and the use of functional-stylistic means lead to the hybridization of motivational writing as a result of interaction of academic, colloquial, administrative and artistic discourses. Particular attention is paid to the identification and description of the implementation of communicative canons, genre-stylistic norms, language standards in the Russian and Western linguocultures.

Первая речь члена парламента как жанр парламентского дискурса: функциональный аспект

Introduction. The paper focuses on the genre of a maiden speech, which is the first official speech of a newly elected parliamentarian. The relevance of the research is due to the fact that no special studies of this genre have been presented in the linguistic literature so far.
 Aim. The study aims at discovering and describing the functional features of a maiden speech. 
 Methodology and research methods. The methods used in the work include the descriptive method, the methods of discursive, contextual, functional and stylistic analysis.
 Results. As a result of the study, the following main functions of a maiden speech are identified: the functions of presentation, social identification and solidarity, the performative function, the functions of orientation, differentiation and confrontation. Special features and means of implementing each of the functions are considered. It is concluded that a maiden speech is a “hybrid” speech genre, in which the signs of ritual genres are combined with the signs of orientational genres; the features of agonal genres can also be found in a maiden speech.
 The scientific novelty of this study lies in the functional approach to the description of the speech genre under consideration.
 The practical significance of the paper is determined by the fact that its results can be used in the courses of lectures on political linguistics, discourse theory, genristics and rhetoric.

Иллокутивное самоубийство как прагматическое ядро комических речевых жанров

The article is devoted to the study of “illocutionary suicide” in comic speech genres, the basis for the analysis of which was the model of the speech genre developed by T.V. Shmeleva. In linguopragmatics there is a narrow (Z. Wendler) and a broad understanding of the named pragmatic phenomenon. Given the specifics of Russian performatives, by “illocutionary suicide” we mean a speech act in which a verb (phrase, idiom) is used, forming the intention of “self-exposure”. During the analysis of the empirical material it was found that “illocutionary suicide” is stated only in jokes, jokes, comic dialogues and humorous “opinions about”. In addition to the obligatory intention to make the interlocutor laugh, intentional “self-exposure” also acts as a presenter. The axiological component of all the analyzed comic speech genres is multifaceted: from the point of view of real communicants, actions called “provocative” verbs are condemned by society; from the point of view of the heroes of these works, assessments and values can vary, up to a positive attitude to autonomous actions and deeds. The leading type of presumption is counterethical, which includes additional semantic shades. It is revealed that the content of the proposition is based mainly on ontological anomalies, sometimes synthesized with logical or lingual ones. The linguistic embodiment is presented in the traditional form for a performative speech act, or is mitigated by negation and constructions with the semantics of the condition.

Macro-Modeling Linguistic Variability: Expanding the Boundaries of Linguistic Variation Studies (A Comprehensive Review of Russian Linguists’ Works)

This paper presents a comprehensive review of contemporary works by Russian linguists on the topic of linguistic variation. The aim of the review is to identify universal foundations for systematizing the diverse manifestations of this concept in language and speech, as reflected in linguistics. The main focus of the review is on two parameters of macromodeling linguistic variability: structural-level and functional-discursive. The first is associated with “enlarging” the subject of variation studies from phonemes to texts, while the second parameter is related to considering various phenomena of speech activity in terms of variation, such as language consciousness, language personality, and formats of speech activity (goals, discourses, speech genres, etc.). The relevance of this research is determined by the context of the emergence of variation studies as a universal direction in language research. A monitoring of linguistic works on variation shows that linguistics in this aspect is developing along the lines of globalization. The material for this study was collected from publications on Elibrary.ru from 2000 to 2023. The focus was primarily on works that explicitly mentioned concepts related to the ontological manifestations of linguistic variation and the epistemological trend towards their metalinguistic globalization.

REGULATORY COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY IN THE UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENTARY DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Ukrainian parliamentary discourse in terms of the communicative behavior of its participants, in particular, the implementation of communicative strategies of its participants. The concepts of political discourse and parliamentary discourse as a manifestation of the latter are defined; genre features of Ukrainian parliamentary discourse are revealed and to characterize parliamentary debates as the main speech genre. The main communicative strategies of politicians - participants in the Ukrainian parliamentary discourse are outlined and the linguistic means of implementing communicative strategies are analyzed. The study is focused on the communicative behavior of the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada meetings, who performs the communicative role of the moderator and chooses regulatory as the main strategy of communicative behavior in the parliamentary discourse. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the regulatory strategy in the Ukrainian parliamentary discourse. The object of the study is the Ukrainian parliamentary discourse, the subject of the study is the speech behavior of the “moderator” of the parliamentary debates in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The transcripts of the meetings of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for 2022-2023 served as the research material. The speech behavior of the speaker is considered - the chairman of the meetings is the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada or his deputy, who acts as a moderator at the parliamentary debates: announces the agenda, gives the floor, sums up what was said, etc. Participants in parliamentary debates take turns speaking in the discussion: in most cases, the topic of discussion is set by one politician who presents the draft law, and the deputies criticize or support his speech. The regulatory strategy is subordinated to the observance of procedural norms and rules during parliamentary debates, the information strategy provides for the notification of new and operational information to the participants of the parliamentary discourse. The study deepens the theoretical foundations of political linguistics, discourse studies and linguistic pragmatics; theories of speech genres and communicative strategies.

Writing Orality: Australian Aboriginal Voices in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria

ABSTRACT Australian Aboriginal stories have thrived for thousands of years through oral tradition and Aboriginal author Alexis Wright invokes this tradition in the construction of her novel Carpentaria. This article investigates the orality of Carpentaria, which stages “oral” narrators who speak differently to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readerships. First, using Bakhtin’s notion of “speech genre”, the article explores why Wright creates these two narrative layers. Second, it investigates the language use and tone of voice in the framing narrative that addresses non-Indigenous readers. Third, it looks closely at Wright’s linguistic experimentation in the embedded narrative, creating multiple oral effects through language and mobilising the storytelling dynamics of performance, spontaneity, rhythms and mnemonics. Finally, it discusses how her creative use of orality plays off and with its Western literary conceptions and enacts cross-cultural communication between the two readerships.

TOURISM LEXIC IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL DISCOURSE

The article is dedicated to the study of the main problems and features of discourse as an extremely complex and multifaceted phenomenon. First of all, we defined the concept of “discourse” from the point of view of its main criteria and aspects of study. Discourse itself is defined as a type of communicative activity, an interactive phenomenon, a flown of speech, which has various forms of manifestation, takes place within a specific communication channel, as a result of which a wide variety of speech genres are formed. We consider “tourist discourse” as a text that is a communicative component (subsystem) of speech in combination with non-speech — pragmatic, socio-cultural, psychological and other factors. The components of tourism discourse include the discourse of actual travelers about their travels and their activities (living, food, entertainment), tour guides about places of interest, as well as the discourse of traveler bloggers who describe their travels using mass media, social networks, and their own blogs. According to the form, tourist discourse is presented in monologue (messages, stories, announcements, basic information about hotels, menus, articles, reviews, etc.) and dialogic communication (tourists, bloggers, hotel employees, etc.). After analyzing various studies, two main types of tourist discourse can be distinguished: formal and informal tourist discourse. Formal discourse from the point of view of vocabulary is represented by literary (both neutral and terminological) lexical and phraseological units. Formal tourism discourse is usually characterized by the use of highly specialized and interdisciplinary terminology, inherent only in this field. Informal tourism discourse is represented by colloquial (both literary and non-literary) vocabulary and phraseology. This includes professionalism and jargon. As a separate component of the tourist discourse, we single out texts that have an interdiscursive status and occupy an intermediate position between two parts of the tourist discourse, formal and informal. To such texts we refer to tourism journalism, which is touristic only in terms of its subject and mainly has features inherent in newspaper and journalistic texts.

Horoscope in the media space: a linguocommunicative aspect

The article considers the phenomenon of horoscopic text relevant to modern linguistics in general and analyzes it as a type of speech genre in particular. The article argues that the horoscopic text, functioning in the media space, is a cluster integrative unit created under the influence of a number of extralinguistic factors, which is directly reflected both in the linguistic means used in horoscopes and in their structural organization. The ubiquitous digitalization of the information space causes a reduction of a predictive text’s volume and brings it closer to media genres. The proof that the horoscope is a separate speech genre is the regular use of a certain set of speech acts in its texts, which make up the formula of the genre, while the range of relevant speech acts gets limited by this formula. As a result of our analysis of three hundred horoscope texts, we found that two types of a regularly used speech act can be distinguished in their structure, or two basic components of the media horoscope structure. The first component, implemented in a proposition, is represented by an assertive; the second part, perceived as a recommendation, is represented in the form of a directive of various types. We consider that assertives can be divided into informative and evaluative; directives are verbalized by means of prescriptive and motivational varieties, phraseoreflections, promptings with a forecast, permissions and suggestions. Each type of a speech act is verbalized through a certain set of lexical and grammatical means of the language strengthening the communicative position of the author.

Языковая репрезентация речевого жанра «пояснение» в медицинском дискурсе в рамках телевизионной просветительской передачи (на примере передачи «Мед. эксперт»)

The paper analysed the speech genre of explanation often implemented as a popular scientific description of a disease within the framework of the television genre of educational transmission of medical topics, that is, the researchers consider medical discourse. The aim of the study is to identify the differential features of explanation as a speech genre based on the material of television medical discourse. The study is novel in that it is the first to highlight the linguistic features that define the speech genre of explanation. As a result, it has been revealed that in the medical discourse in Russian, the genre of explanation is characterised at the pragmatic level by the adaptation of information for the audience of potential viewers. A trusting atmosphere is created by emphasising the status of the addresser. The pragmatic attitude toward explication simplicity is expressed in speech at all levels. The speech genre of explanation can be constructed according to the classical scheme on a “simple-to-complex” basis, but it is also possible to use the reverse technique.

Tracking the transmission of culture: a cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation in the US undergraduate public speaking course

ABSTRACT Ethnography of communication studies conducted by communication scholars, including those informed by cultural discourse theory, typically approach the cultural transmission of discursive resources using a narrow conception of language socialization. In this conception, expert speakers instruct or otherwise compel novice speakers to speak in locally recognized, normative ways and thereby achieve or affirm membership in the collective. I perform the cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation to extend this approach. In particular, I study narratives representing the movements of the Anglo-American speech genre known as public speaking in a US undergraduate course and a series of focus groups. Speakers narrated movement along four paths: from beyond the classroom into the classroom; inside the classroom (with the class acting as primary agent of dissemination); inside the classroom (with student speakers acting as secondary agents of dissemination); and from the classroom beyond the classroom. The analysis suggests three extensions of the existing approach to cultural transmission and, thereby, of cultural discourse theory: accounting for cultural ideologies (or metacultures) of transmission; producing more comprehensive accounts of transmission’s participation structure; and accounting for the local meanings of mobile resources both in context and in motion.

‘Folk’ in the Age of Algorithms: Theorizing Folklore on Social Media Platforms

Over the past few decades, folklore scholars have demonstrated that online expressions and performance play a role in folklore studies and that folklore thrives in digital spaces. However, theorization of the specificities of digital spaces as sites for folklore is still just getting started. This article is a contribution to this theorization, focusing on one specific and popular area of connective culture: social media platforms. Combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres with perspectives from critical algorithm studies and science and technology studies (STS), I suggest that social media algorithms are actors which simultaneously promote change and continuity, and as such take part in folk culture and the production and transmission of folklore. The aim is to develop a theoretical framework that accounts for how the algorithm takes part in communication (whether human users are aware of it or not), in order to deepen our understanding of how tradition is created and sustained in algorithmically governed communication.