Prysedska V. Structure, Semantics and Pragmatics of the English, German, Russian and Ukrainian Public Directives

The thesis focuses on the contrastive analysis of structural, semantic, functional and communicative-pragmatic features of public directives as a specific text genre in the English, German, Russian and Ukrainian languages. Certain isomorphic features of public directives as conventional, directive microtexts of impersonal reference, whose main function is to regulate people’s behaviour in public places, have been distinguished in the languages of comparison. The analysis of structural-compositional means of the texts in question has made it possible to highlight both their common and differential characteristics in English, German, Russian and Ukrainian. Structural and semantic peculiarities of public directives, typical of each language, have been determined on the basis of the analysis of lexical, grammatical and lexical-grammatical means in the four functional-semantic groups of inducing semantics, namely, those of prescription, prohibition, warning and informing.