Professional Educational Discourse In Russia: A Socio-Pragmatic Approach

The paper deals with a socio-pragmatic approach to professional educational discourse aimed at a description of the communicative behavior of teachers and students in its various genres. The scheme of this discourse includes its basic components – the objective, participants, chronotope, values, strategies, and genres. The topic of the discourse, as well as its tonality, is also relevant for its description. Our understanding of educational discourse is based on a multidimensional model of discourse analysis. It includes five directions of analysis. Structurally, discourse is analyzed as a sequence of utterances in a certain communicative situation. Topically, discourse is explained as a combination of themes which may be interpreted as connected with bringing up people, usually young ones, and instructing them so as to help them be socialized as members of a community. Socially, it is important to focus upon participants of any type of discourse. They may be analyzed from many points of view, including personality-oriented and status-oriented communication. Pragmatically, any discourse may be explained according to its tonality, formal or casual, serious or jocular, phatic or informative, ideologically charged or neutral, sincere or manipulative, etc. Instrumentally, we distinguish between oral and written type of speech, contact and distant conversations, protocol fixed and normal discourse. The main trends of educational discourse studies in modern Russia are represented in pedagogical interaction in secondary schools, academic communicative behavior in universities, learners’ communicative activity, and educational instrumentalities.