COGNITIVE AREAS OF TEXT AND DISCOURSE RESEARCH

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the cognitive aspects of the text and discourse in the modern linguistics. It is mentioned that such phenomena as text and discourse are studied in the cognitive-discoursive scientific paradigm, that is main today. The text is characterized as the macrosign, the unity of the textual meaning and the indivisibility of the meaningcreating principle is stated. The communication and the cognitivism are understood as the active cognitive process, and the text is the tool of such communication and cognition. The usage of such approach is adequate, from our point of view, for understanding of the notion of text from in terms of the actualization of the textual cognitive potential. Global properties of the text, which correspond to its status of the integral communicative-cognitive tool, are defined as the strategies of the text, and the actions with elements of the text coming from it are tactics. Textual strategies are fixed in the text as signs of the defined topic. Text is, first of all, the bearer of the cognitive and communicative functions of the speech. Because of it, such its aspects as informative and modal find their reflection and show the attitude of the subject to the stated. The communicative aspect of the text presupposes its target usage in different speech acts. Discourse is understood as an obligatory record of extra-linguistic factors, factor of the sender and the recipient, their communicative intention, role, satiation of communication. Three levels of the language personality’s organization were distinguished (lexis, thesaurus, pragmaticon) which correspond the communicative needs (contact, informative, influential) and with three components of communication (communicative, interactive, perceptual). The invariant model of discourse was proposed, which consists of three levels: formal-semiotic, cognitive-interpretive and social-interactive. The discourse abilities of the first level include main actions and operation of the semiotic activity. The discourse abilities of the second level are responsible for the adequate representation of real or imaginary world’s fragments. The discourse abilities of the third level are oriented at the relevance of verbalized acts’ usage in the modern social interaction. The investigation of strategies and tactics and their representation’s means in the text and discourse are very actual, as far as it gives reasons for creating the general typology of strategic-tactical potential, division of tools of their manifestation in ethnocultural and intercultural communication, as communicative strategies of one and the same communicative behavior are not the same in different cultures. So, for many cultures it is important to preserve the distance, softening of the categorical evaluations, uncertainty, and deviation from the direct answer, which not always can be transposed into the communication with representatives of other linguocultural communities.