On the problem of integral description of speech genres

The article formulates the subject and tasks of the future speech-genre discipline – the integral description of speech genres – which, in the author’s opinion, claims to be central to the general theory of speech genres. The main sources of the theory of speech genres integrality include the high level of a speech genre as a speech and language unit, the complex, multidimensional and multicomponent nature of the theory of speech genres, the multidisciplinarity of the theory of speech genres (it draws on data from almost all the humanities and partly non-humanities). The integral description of speech genres will include the following parameters: the cultural and historical context of the speech genre; typological characteristics of speech genre (including their place in various typologies); speech-genre variantology and recurrence, including new technogenic and Internet derivatives from primary, traditional genres; representation in the corps. The integral description of speech genres and its parameters are discussed in connection with the division of linguistics (partly – other sciences, for example, literary criticism). It is shown that the majority of divisions of linguistics that are significant for the integral description of speech genres go back to Saussure’s idea of opposing internal and external linguistics, and the main tasks of the theory of speech genres correspond to those three “eternal” problems of linguistics formulated by V. M. Alpatov: “How is language structured?”, “How does language function?” and “How does language develop?” The author discusses directions of the most important genre studies, from which the integral description of speech genres should be “composed”, and the criteria used for their selection: 1) the model is already integral (multi-component and interdisciplinary); 2) universal (applicable to many languages and national cultures, in different historical periods); 3) based on this model, the largest number of studies was carried out. The first criterion is met by the model of T. V. Shmeleva, the second – by the universalist model of A. Wierzbicka, the third – by traditional speech-genre models: lexical, syntactic and pragmatic. In conclusion, the author discusses the unresolved problems of speech genres, which can be logically solved on the basis of the integral description of speech genres: typology (integral bases for the classification of speech genres claim to be more reliable), variantology, applied and experimental aspects (vocabulary representation of speech genres and corpus aspect, including the analysis of key phrases of speech genres).