THE PROBLEM OF CORPUS-BASED RESEARCH OF SPEECH GENRE

The development of the theory of speech genres requires an answer to the question of to what extent the identified system is genre-specific and what parameters are relevant to the genre. Digitalization and corpus projects increase the need for formalized criteria for attribution and preparation of genre data. In modern research practices, the empirical description of speech works and the theoretical justification of the genre are often mixed: the availability of a corpus of texts substitutes for the proof of genre status and reduces the analysis to the “problem of naming”. The purpose of this work is to substantiate genre source studies as an applied branch of the theory of speech genres and to outline the tools of corpus genre studies. To achieve this, external and internal criticism of the source, the method of oppositions, and the analysis of natural speech works are used. A “passport” of a speech work is proposed, which records substantive parameters (medium, form of fixation) and non-substantive factors (context, intentions, and expectations). The triad of contextualization (meso-, macro-, and paratextual levels) is substantiated as the basis for genre markup. This approach increases the verifiability of genre conclusions and reduces the risk of unsubstantiated claims about the “discovery” of a genre.