A speech genre in the paradigm of linguistic variantology (based on the genre "private diary")

In this study, the example of the personal diary substantiates the possibility of the transfer of the main provisions of linguistic variantology to the field of genre studies. In connection with this perspective, a speech genre is described through the opposition "invariant / variant". The invariant of a speech genre is represented by a set of genre-relevant features, integral to speech modifications (variants) of this unit. Variants of a speech genre are regularly reproduced modifications that preserve the similarity of the illo-cutionary-intentional and thematic content, the formal composition and differ in communicative-pragmatic feautures: sphere of use, nature of the interaction of the author and the addressee, the discourse and, possibly, the substrate. The variable range of the studied genre the authors identified in the operation of a genre-shaped text in different communicative-pragmatic conditions includes the classic (handwritten) diary; the diary of an outstanding personality initially / later interpreted as a work to be published; the online diary; the diary as part of an artwork or a narrative form of an entire work. These versions of the genre are integrated by characteristics genre-forming (nuclear) for the given genre: the special form of expressing the informative-evaluative intention which manifests itself as intimately presented descriptions of personally significant events saturated with the sense of the significance of the individual. The determining factor of genre adaptation in this or that communicative sphere is the factor of the addressee. The handwritten diary with its self-addressing is characterized by a similar producer and recipient of the text to convey the message: the person is writing the diary for him-/herself, which results in the intimacy of diary entries. However, along with the direct addressee there is an indirect recipient, a potential reader the author imagines. The presence of an indirect addressee is "played upon" in the artistic versions of the diary, which, along with the original subject of self-addressing, has an indirect addressee, a "probable" lady whose possible reading Pechorin begins to focus upon when writing a diary. The potential public orientation of the handwritten diary is fully implemented in the online diary, which is characterized by the orientation to publicity. As a consequence of the special communicative-pragmatic conditions in the Internet communication, new genre appear ("creative" diary of amateur authors; aphoristic diaries as collections of sayings of the master; diaries-projects; diaries close to the forum dialogue). They preserve the genre category and the orientation of the author to personal sublimation, the informative and evaluative intention, but significantly change genre features, which leads to the transformation of the genre and the emergence of genroids or new genres.

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