MOTIVATION LETTER FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE POLYPARADIGM APPROACH

Abstract

The article focuses on the study of motivation letter which is a personalized document created by an applicant for a competitive position in business and academic environment. The aim of the article is to present a comprehensive interpretation of motivational writing at the intersection of different research concepts and communicative practices. The empirical base was made up of motivation letters prepared by American, British and Russian applicants for admission to various educational programs, as well as recommendations offered by universities on how to compose such texts. The main research method was a polyparadigm approach including discursive, linguocultural, narratological, genre, linguistic and stylistic aspects. The results of the study demonstrate that the motivation letter is an imperative and initial speech genre, with a hierarchical — from bottom to top — vector of relations between the author and the addressee. The content of the message reflects the development of professional and personal qualities of the applicant in a retrospective-perspective manner, whereas the form is determined by a set of structural elements (greeting, exposition, main part, conclusion). The article considers the peculiarities of lexical nominations and grammatical constructions used to express the meanings which are significant for the participants of communication. It proves that the techniques of storytelling and the use of functional-stylistic means lead to the hybridization of motivational writing as a result of interaction of academic, colloquial, administrative and artistic discourses. Particular attention is paid to the identification and description of the implementation of communicative canons, genre-stylistic norms, language standards in the Russian and Western linguocultures.