LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC PECULIARITIES OF THE ENGLISH RITUAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

Purpose. The article analyses the English ritual discourse and identifies its peculiarities. Ritual and the discourse generated by it are defined. The object of research is viewed from the perspectives of its structure, semantics and stylistics. The place of ritual discourse is sought out among the types of discourse; in particular, it belongs to the pragmalinguistic one. Methods. To solve the tasks, general scientific methods of synthesis and inference, lexical and semantic methods of definitional and descriptive analyses, stylistic as well as elements of pragmatic analysis are applied. Results. The genre diversity of ritual discourse is proven. A prayer or a religious service, which combines it with fideistic discourse, a ceremony of initiation in students, which borders on institutional discourse, or a dissertation defence, which confirms its ties with scientific discourse, can represent it. The material for this research is the speeches delivered at the funerals of royal persons, namely, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Funeral speech is a special genre of ritual discourse called eulogy. The latter belongs to the ritual discourse in the form of organization, functions and characteristic features. Like ritual discourse in general, it is characterised by a high tone of communication, cyclicity, emotional marking, dramaticity as well as continuity. Among the stylistic figures that speakers resort to, the most frequent are comparison, ascending gradation – the increase of parts of the statement, in which each subsequent one contains strengthening emotional and expressive meaning. Such stylistic technique as quoting fiction is used in speeches to enhance emotionality, and the use of quotes from the dead themselves emphasizes the bond between the speaker and the deceased and their importance to each other. The singled out extralinguistic signs indicate a high tone of speech, emotionality and dramaticity as characteristic features of ritual discourse. Conclusions. A formal register characterizes all the analysed speeches, and most of them have a clear structure. They contain a short biographical reference about the deceased, personal impressions from communication with them, and they end with the expressions of gratitude to the deceased person.