Lexical and grammatical means of expressing medical advice in an educational television programme about health (based on the Russian language)

Abstract

The current article studies the advice speech genre in the Russian language. Its purpose is to describe the linguistic embodiment of the genre in the television medical discourse. By linguistic embodiment we understand both lexical and grammatical means of expressing the speech genre, whereas by television medical discourse we understand a polydiscursive text environment produced by an educational television programme about health. The article explores the scientific problem, based on the programme, broadcast on one of the Russian TV channels. To achieve the goal, we study both theoretical and practical issues. The former include a thorough analysis of scientific works devoted to the following problems: hybridization of discourse and its genres, the borderline between such terms as “speech genre” and “speech act”, the “linguistic embodiment” as a speech genre parameter, features of the speech genre of advice and peculiarities of its medical variety. The latter include the analysis of the empirical material, represented by 30 episodes of the chosen programme. The scientific results are achieved with the help of the continuous sampling method, the analysis of dictionary definitions and the quantitative method. The article concludes that the advice speech genre is built with the main and secondary linguistic means. The lexical basis of the genre is introduced by performatives “advise” and “recommend” as well as such modal verbs as “should (preferably)”, “ought to”, “must” and “need”. The grammatical basis of the genre is introduced by the second person imperative.