The genre name as a factor of speech genre stabilization (on the material of the diary genre)

In this study, by example of a personal diary, the authors substantiate the possibility to transfer the main provisions of linguistic variantology to the area of genristics. In connection with this, the speech genre is described through the opposition “invari-ant/variant”. The invariant of the speech genre is represented by a set of genre-relevant features, integral to the speech modifications (variants) of this unit. Variants of the speech genre are regularly reproducible modifications that preserve the sameness of illocutionary-intentional and thematic content, formal compositional structure and differ in communicative-pragmatic properties: the field of usage, the nature of the interaction of the author and the addressee, the discourse and, possibly, the substrate. The variants of the studied genre that are found in the functioning of a genre-represented text in different communicative-pragmatic conditions include the classic (handwritten) diary; the diary of an outstanding personality initially or later perceived as a work to be published; the online diary; the diary as part of a literary work or a narrative form of the whole work. These variants of the genre are integrated by features that are genre-forming (nuclear) for the given genre: a special form of verbalisation of the informative and evaluative intention, which manifests itself as intimately presented descriptions of personally significant events, imbued with a 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. A handwritten diary is characterized by the same producer and recipient of the text to convey the message: the person writes the diary and reads it him-/herself, which explains the intimacy of diary entries. However, along with the direct addressee, there is an indirect recipient, a potential reader, that the author imagines. The presence of an indirect addressee is used in literary variants of the diary: when writing his diary, Pechorin focuses on a “probable” lady who might read his notes. The potential public orientation of a handwritten diary is fully implemented in an online diary with its essential orientation to publicity. As a consequence of the special communicative-pragmatic conditions in the Internet communication, new genre forms appear (“creative” diaries of amateur authors; aphoristic diaries as collections of sayings of the master; diary projects; diaries close to forum communication). They preserve the genre category and the author's focus on personal sublimation, 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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