Shypitsyna J. Corporate Codes of Ethics in English: Pragmatic, Semantic, and Cognitive Aspects

This thesis presents a comprehensive study of the codes of ethics developed by American corporations. Extensive research of the codes has taken into consideration their structural, semantic, content and pragmatic aspects. From the structural point of view, two types of ethics codes and their main functions have been singled out. The main features of business, legal, and advertisement types of discourse reflected in the text of a code have been distinguished and described. Within the pragmatic aspect, the means of expression of deontic and alethic types of modality characteristic of ethics codes have been examined. The specifics of addresser/addressee interaction, subordination or cooperation, have been explored, which allows the distinction of two types of codes of ethics: internally oriented and externally oriented. There is ample description given of the Speech Acts types, as well as the strategies and tactics of the addresser’s speech behaviour. Addresser’s adherence to the Cooperative and Politeness principles has been established. The main concepts of ethics codes have been determined and their verbalizers have been analyzed.