DISCOURSE OF SCOUTING: CATEGORIZATION AND TYPOLOGY

Nakonechna T.V.

Postgraduate student, Chernivtsi National Yurii Fedkovych University, Ukraine

DISCOURSE OF SCOUTING: CATEGORIZATION AND TYPOLOGY

Abstract

The article tackles the problem of functioning of English discourse of scouting as a linguistic phenomenon. We consider the issue of linguistic features and typology of English discourse of scouting. The author gives a short gist on the history and nowadays of discourse analysis.

Keywords: discourse, discourse analysis, discourse typology, categorization.

Наконэчна Т.В.

Аспирант, Черновицкий национальный университет имени Юрия Федьковича, Украина

АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНИЫЙ СКАУТСКИЙ ДИСКУРС: КАТЕГОРИЗАЦИЯ И ТИПОЛОГИЯ

Аннотация

В статье рассматриваются проблемы функционирования англоязычного скаутского дискурса как лингвистического явления, освещена проблема категоризации и типологии англоязычного скаутского дискурса, осуществляется краткий экскурс в историю и настоящее дискурсивных исследований.

Ключевые слова: дискурс, анализ дискурса, типология дискурса, категоризация.

Social sciences today widely use language and discourse as a methodological basis for scientific analysis. Philosophers were the first to do this, after them there were cognitive scientists and endomethodologists. A lot more other scientific schools used language material in their studies and this is often considered to be the breakthrough in social sciences [3, 47].

The discourse theory, notwithstanding the multiple definitions of the notion, takes one of the central places in modern linguistic science, where the discourse is viewed not as a language system, but a kind of “language product” in live communication. M. Makarov claims that discourse in modern linguistics is of the same importance as euro in European economy [3, 58].

The aim of the given article is argumentation and definition of the categorization and typology of English discourse of scouting.

The topicality of our research is based on the fact that in nowadays linguistics we do not find fundamental research on this type of discourse, though scouting makes a great part of any civilized society, English society included.

The term “discourse” appeared in modern linguistics owing to Z. Harris, who in 1952 having introduced distributional analysis made a try to present the meaning of language elements as a function of distribution, and considered discourse to be one of the forms of distribution. His hypothesis is based on the presumption about identity of phrases and chains of phrases [9].

In the 70s the terms “text” and “discourse” were considered to be identical [5, 120]. Whereas in the 80s linguists started to study and show the difference between these two notions using differentiation between language and society, static and dynamic correspondently. To some extent this approach considered the ideas of E. Benveniste [8], Teun A. van Dijk [1], Kenneth Lee Pike [10], who saw discourse indivisible from the person. In this respect the discourse got the features of eventness and situationnes, having widened its structure due to new constituent parts such as subject of communication, addressee, moment and place of speech production. G. Pocheptsov defines the difference between the text and the discourse as the difference between the sentence and the statement. According to him, the statement combines the sentence with the social context. He claims the same processes take place on the text-discourse level [4, 10].

In the framework of discourse theory there are several definitions of the term “discourse”, but we will keep to one of them. Discourse is the creation and organization of the segments of a language above as well as below the sentence. It is segments of language which may be bigger or smaller than a single sentence but the adduced meaning is always beyond the sentence. The term discourse applies to both spoken and written language, in fact to any sample of language used for any purpose. Any series of speech events or any combination of sentences in written form wherein successive sentences or utterances hang together is discourse. Discourse can not be confined to sentential boundaries. It is something that goes beyond the limits of sentence. In another words discourse is “any coherent succession of sentences, spoken or written” [10]. The links between sentences in connected discourse are as much important as the links between clauses in a sentence. Besides, discourse has some distinctive features - being contextual, being personal (it means common personal experience of the addressee and addresser), and being “in process” [5, 199].

Keeping this information in mind, we may apply it to discourse of scouting in the following way. It is obvious, that discourse of scouting is a succession of sentences, either spoken (communication among the members of scout troops during their meetings or camps) or written (practical books in scouting, scout rules, scout songs etc.). Consequently we may claim that discourse of scouting is contextual – it appears in the definite context of the scout environment; discourse of scouting is personal – for the members of scout groups the world of scouting is not only common but very well known; and the discourse of scouting, as any other type of discourse, appears in progress, it has accomplished discourse structure, only text structure is open. Concerning the participants of communication in discourse of scouting, we define them as the MASTER (mostly adult members), the SCOUT (young member) and the GROUP – the collective body, consisting of young and adult members.

The important part in the theory of discourse analysis belongs to the aspect of discourse categories. We will consider the discourse of scouting through the list of categories, defined by V. Karasyk. According to this author, discourse has four groups of categories:

• Categories of constituency (the discourse of scouting is mainly structured, as one stylistic and thematic whole);
• Categories of genre and style (the discourse of scouting is stylistically independent, has some genre peculiarities and some clichés);
• Categories of content (the discourse of scouting has its own addressness, the author’s image, modality and intertextual orientation);
• Categories of form and structure (the discourse of scouting has its own composition and cohesion) [2, 55].

Having considered all the data given above we can try to define the notion of the discourse of scouting. So, discourse of scouting is the type of discourse, that has spoken and written forms, depending on which it can have the participants of communication – the MASTER, the SCOUT, the GROUP and the AUTHOR (for written form of discourse); the situation, where the communication takes place can be some scout meetings and other events; this type of discourse has its own context, clichés and categories.

In other words, we may say that discourse of scouting is a separate type of discourse – typologically and categorically – and it requires further even deeper analysis and description.

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