COMMENTARY AS A TYPE OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION

Abstract

The present paper deals with the problem of a commentary as a secondary communicative action. The aim of the article is to describe several discourse types of commentary (a commentary in everyday oral communication, a scientific discourse, a commentary in a legal communication, a commentary in a religious discourse) and define its current discursive features. As a result of the study, it was found that a commentary in everyday oral communication mostly expresses specification of the previous phrase and personal standpoint of interlocutors. In a scientific discourse a commentary is used to ground the author’s approach to the problem and to express a critical evaluation of the problems, usually in a regardful mode. A commentary in a legal communication is given to define and specify certain relevant notions in the sphere of law. A commentary in a religious discourse is used to interpret the basic sentences. A network discourse commentary expresses a personal evaluative attitude to the information published, and responses to it make a polemic dialogue. The scientific novelty of the study is that the definite features of the four types of the commentary are revealed. The study of commentary contributes to the development of theory of speech genres, theory of text and discourse, and pragmalinguistics.