On the correlation of genres of natural and artistic discourses: setting the problem (in the genre "letter to the editor")

The aim of the undertaken study is to describe the functioning of the speech genre "letter to the editor" in different communicative spheres: in natural writing and in artistic discourse, to show how the genre features of this genre are implemented in the designated communicative spheres, or, otherwise, how the communicative sphere of the speech genre functioning reflects in its genre properties. Two letters to the editor are the evidence basis of the research: a real letter to the editor of a regional newspaper and its artistic version, presented in Shukshin's story "Raskas". The latter qualifies as a secondary speech genre, and, accordingly, as ontologically derived from its primary version, different in its functioning and stylistic processing. The research hypothesis is that the presence of the speech genre in the literary text is reflected in its specificity: the existence of the speech genre "letter to the editor" and its genre structure are predetermined by the author's ideological and artistic conception, and the selection of language means implementing the speech genre is based on the artistic purposes, although genre signs of the letter identifying the speech genre are preserved. The description of the speech genre "letter to the editor" is based on the communicative-semiotic model of natural writing genres, the structure of which is close to the frame structure of the situatheme type. With the aim of taking into account the maximum number of situation components, the communicative and semiotic model is focused on the selection of material and social elements as relevant genre forming features for this kind of speech activity. The letter to the editor as an epistolary genre with its genre features (e.g., border formalization fixing the beginning and the end of the letter) acquires features of the journalistic style (special author's purpose, mass target, newspaper vocabulary, aim at the public communication sphere) when it enters the journalistic discourse. The architectonics of both letters shows similar structural and content features: presentation of a past event and its author's evaluation, an offender's description, wording of the author's request, elements of self-presentation, request for a response as the appellative component of the discourse. Similar to the natural writing version, the artistic letter, built according to the formal and structural genre canons, expresses artistically significant elements that correspond to the artistic and figurative author's task (explanation of the reasons for which the author refers to the letter, his own vision of the situation by explaining the wife's motive, his own feelings about the past event). Being artistically oriented, the letter helps to clarify the concept of the character's life and understand his character.

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