Means of pragmatic focusing in Spanish diplomatic discourse of the 18th–19th centuries

The article studies the pragmatic phenomena in historical diplomatic discourse. It aims to describe the communicative-pragmatic functions of diplomatic documents of the past and to determine the role of deixis and lexical evaluation as means of pragmatic focusing in the implementation of persuasive impact. The material of the study consists of seventy handwritten diplomatic reports of Spanish envoys to Russia addressed to the state secretaries of Spain in the second half of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th centuries. The considered diplomatic documents highlight the issues of history, politics, economics, social structure, as well as on key political figures of the foreign country. The study has shown that a diplomatic report represents informative and persuasive functions, the lines of which are blurring due to the pragmatic focusing means introduced into the text. The authors of documents typically used deixis (demonstrative, possessive, indefinite adjectives) as a way of determining the so-called "ours" and "theirs". A semantic-statistical analysis has shown that the largest number of deictic means in combination with other lexemes related to the semantic area of "ours" (65.62%) and the area of "theirs" (55.42%) are concentrated in documents verbalizing the topic of a possible conflict and rivalry between powers. When a diplomatic report starts with demonstrative adjectives (especially este), used for partial substitution of proper names, it may focus the addressee's attention on significant fragments of the text and to express the author's intention to distance himself from an object of the utterance. A significant role in the aspect of pragmatic focusing is played by lexical evaluation, which contributes to the formation of the addressee's predetermined image of another country. The study has shown that diplomats used expressive-evaluative vocabulary to convince their superiors of the expansionist nature of the policy of Russia, that potentially could interfere with Spanish interests, but at the same time they expressed the need for mutually beneficial trade. The portrait of Catherine II, created by the Spanish envoy, also appears to be axiologically ambivalent. Such variability in estimates may be due to changing political conditions in the context of relations between Russian and Spanish Empires. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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