The “Environmental Debate” Genre

In relation to serious global climatic changes, there is an activation of speech acts within the framework of ecological discourse. The analyzed material allows discussing the emergence of a new type of speech genre of debates, such as environmental debates (ED). TV companies organize ED as part of election campaigns and for the purpose of obtaining information about the current processes from specialists of related fields. ED differ from classical debates in a number of their characteristics. The special compositional, linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of ecological debates allow them to be identified as an independent genre of speech. The article aims to reveal the characteristics of the ED genre by describing their constitutive features. For this purpose, we analyzed ED in several countries, conducted corpus analysis of the ED to identify some pragmatic and temporal characteristics, and performed linguistic analysis. Communicative analysis revealed such tactics as argumentation, analyzing the situation, explanation, clarification, predicting the most probable ways of developing the situation, etc. As a result, argumentative and expressive types of communication were found. ED in terms of temporal characteristics assume a perfunctory, present and futural perspective. The following thematic blocks were identified within the analyzed debates: recognition of the existence of the environmental crisis situation, pride and expression of love for one’s country and the desire to preserve its nature, criticism of those who neglect these values, and presentation of a set of measures to protect nature. ED actualize the national and global value of nature conservation as a way to self-preservation of mankind.