Situational Factors Influence on Variation of Linear-Hierarchical Thematic Models of English Business Discourse

Abstract

The article presents the analysis of situational factors influence on the realisation of linear- hierarchical thematic models of English business discourse. The material of the research is presented by dialogue fragments, complied by the native speakers of English, taken from authentic modern film scripts. The material is taken by the entire choice. The methods of analysis which have been used in the research are text interpretation, description and comparison. It is established that thematic models that structure the content of English business discourse include the static (hierarchical and linear-hierarchical) and dynamic (probabilistic) models. Linear- hierarchical content organisation is based on two scenarios – monotopical and polytopical ones. On the basis of the identified thematic scenarios and communicative situations of English business discourse correlations between them are defined. It is revealed that variations of linear-hierarchical thematic models are caused by situational factors. The impact of these factors is evident in qualitative and quantitative characteristics of linear-hierarchical model realisation in communicative situations solving production problems, business partners meeting, interview and briefing. Qualitative characteristics concern the completeness of the linear-hierarchical models realisation, which can be full or partial. It is stated that in the communicative situations solving production problems and business partners meeting the linear-hierarchical thematic models are fully realised, in the communicative situations interview and briefing these models are presented partially – only monotopical model is fixed. Thus such correlations reveal the probabilistic dependences of content elements realisations from communicative situation factors, which are formed on the basis of interactional frames. The given results are supplemented with quantitative analysis.