STUDY OF ENGLISH OCCULT DISCOURSE (literature overview)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the main directions and tasks of modern discourse as a branch of linguistics on the material of English occult discourse. The term "discourse" is used in different meanings and is the subject of study in different scientific areas. The purpose of the article is to provide a brief overview of existing studies of occult discourse and to outline the prospects for its study on the basis of the English language. The opposition of personality-oriented and statusoriented discourse is relevant. In the first case, communicators who know each other well take part in communication, in the second case, communication is reduced to a dialogue between representatives of one or another social group. Among its varieties are political, administrative, legal, military, pedagogical, religious, mystical, medical, business, advertising, sports, scientific, stage and media types of institutional discourse. The researchers note that the list may be supplemented or modified. The article proposes the term "occult discourse", which contains such basic genre varieties as astrological, magical, alchemical. The first two varieties are the subject of many researches, and the latter is hardly covered in linguistic works. Astrological discourse, represented by horoscopes, is studied mainly from psychological, sociological, anthropological and cultural points of view. The horoscope was developed as a media genre, which contributed to its status as one of the defining features of modern mass culture. Magical discourse has a pronounced suggestive potential, is symbolically rich and implements basic strategies of warning, correction and protection. The key problems of occult discourse analysis remain the structure and stratification of discourse, the establishment of its features, units, categories, types; elucidation of ways of organizing various discursive invariants, development of methods and procedures of analysis and description of discourses.