Rhetorical relations of contrast in the blog text: marking means, semantics, functions

Abstract

The article analyzes the rhetorical structures with the contrast semantics and their functions in the blog text, special attention is paid to the contrast relations at the nexus of the blogger’s message and the readers’ reactive commentaries, connection of these relations with the further text deployment. The rhetorical contrast relations are interpreted in the article as the pragmatic format of expressing the incompatibility between the interlocutors’ rational settings while having the same emotional and volitional state. Within the frameworks of the blog text we reveal the rhetorical contrast relation model which includes the justification of the contrast appropriateness from commenting readers. The problematic state of affairs representation as the stimulus presupposes the reactive explanation of the state of affairs resolution ways. The rhetorical contrast relations within the frameworks of the blogger’s stimulus and the reader’s reactive commentary predetermine the coherence of jointly generated virtual text which is marked by the adversative conjunction but or be the communicative context itself. The contrast and its reasoning coordinate the blogger and reader’s modus spheres with the obvious differences in their views upon the state of affairs under discussion. It is demonstrated that in the blog text the rhetorical contrast relations are associated consistently with the expressing of incompatible points of view shared by the interlocutors. In this case the adversative conjunction but pragmatic function is to to correlate the views expressed in the asynchronous time plane and, consequently, to contribute to the linear unfolding of jointly generated text. The functional importance of the adversative conjunction but is specified in the interactive aspect. It is illustrated that this kind of conjunction functions as a kind of signal that the reader realizing the reactive review undertakes the obligation of maintaining the joint design of the contrasting ideas embodied in the blog text.