Interaction of subdiscourses in excursion discourse (on the material of excursion and travel guide genres)

This article discusses the interaction of subdiscourses within excursion discourse which acts as a high-order discourse absorbing and transforming other discourses in accordance with the purpose of a specific communicative situation. The necessity to handle different sub-themes within the same text formation requires resorting to different subdiscourses, while the unity of a global theme binds subdiscourses in a high-order discourse. A full picture of the object is formed by the evolution of the theme in time, where each sub-theme is served by a separate subdiscourse or by a combination of several ones. Discourse has a clearly defined set of core subdiscourses, where the addresser prepares and combines them according to the characteristics of the target audience and the purpose of communication. Diversity of communicative aims within excursion discourse leads to a different design of subdiscourses in each of the two genres: the excursion genre, and the genre of travel guide. The purpose of the guide in the excursion genre is to transmit accessible knowledge and create a complete world view, where sub-themes are chained like beads on a string of historical discourse. The travel guide genre in turn has an intentional nature, where the combination of information and affective functions forms a kind of "bait" and serves to attract the addressee to a city, a resort or a museum. 2) The target audience is an important factor in the organization of the subdiscourse set and the actual shape of the final text. Bearing in mind the characteristics of the audience, the addresser can arrange their speech on one object differently. They can reduce the amount of information for one object and increase it for another one to adjust to the audience perception level. But the core information remains largely untouched, except for probably minor changes in the details and emotional tone. Having a purpose to give new information, discourse absorbs the dictum and axiological content of thematic discourses, reconstructs it in easy-to-understand manner, isolating the discourses from their environment and perceiving them as a repository of information. Discourse omits or, vice versa, adds details, "assessing" information and mixing it with the information from their subdiscourses. The addresser refers to texts which exist in independent discourses, and makes use of the information that is necessary for a present communicative situation, using a set of communicative strategies and tactics for that. Subdiscourses interact and are not recognized as separate discursive formations, being part of excursion discourse. Thus, excursion discourse is an open system which, aiming to convey information, absorbs and processes different discourses.

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