This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of socio-political essay as a type of a text at the hypo-textual and textual levels. The invariant/divergent hypo-textual-level features in graphic, lexical and semantic, syntactic contexts and text-level features in characterological, compositional and chronotopical contexts of social-political essay were denoted. The invariant features of graphic context are: punctuation marks (square/round brackets, exclamation and question marks). The divergent features comprise italics, capitalization, bold, and underlined types. The invariant features of lexical and semantic context are: social and political vocabulary, social and political realities. The invariant features of syntactic context are different types of repetition. The divergent features are: aposiopesis, emphatic construction, syntactic transposition, detachment, inversion and ellipsis. The categories of the image of an author and addressee were regarded as the basic units of analysis in characterological context. They are realized via the use of personal pronouns, metatextual operators, references, quotes, complex "question and answer" and rhetorical questions. The author and addressee's markers serve as the means of realization of phatic, axiological, expressive and persuasive functions. Strong positions of the text (title, introductive and final parts) were singled out within the compositional context. The analysis of empirical data shows that the title performs four leading functions: informative, attractive, axiological and delimitative, which in their turn actualize some text categories: cohesion, coherence, modality and prospection/retrospection. From a pragmatic perspective it was proved that the introductive part of socio-political essay provides the recipient with basic information and is intended to make him continue reading the text, while the final part serves as an element which forms and strengthens the impression from reading the text in reader's memory, and encourages him/her to perform certain actions and make decisions. It's achieved by appealing to the feelings of fear, anger, duty, justice and faith, functioning of opposition "we: they", "good: evil," "the poor: the rich", where addresser and addressee are endowed with positive characteristics, and their opponents with negative. The chronotopical context of socio-political essay was considered in close relation to the objective modality. The peculiarity of chronotopical context is that it's represented by real time and space. The introductive part of socio-political essay is presented by invariable functioning of real objective modality. The final part of the text under investigation is characterized by the invariable use of unreal objective modality. It is emphasized that the functioning of unreal objective modality in the final part helps to achieve the goals and objectives of communication. In particular it facilitates the performance of pragmatic functions of persuasion and influence, the essence of which is to change recipient's attitudes and orientations Pragmatic force of graphic, lexical and semantic, syntactic means in the texts of socio-political essay is revealed in their illocutionary force, aimed at implementation of author's intention. Graphic means substitute prosodic ones (strength and tone of voice) in writing and serve the achievement of author's pragmatic goals by highlighting the most important communicative elements. Usage of lexical and semantic elements serves the realization of expressive and phatic functions. Pragmatic potential of syntactic means is determined by their ability to add to logical or emotive significance of the utterance. Keywords: socio-political essay, text type, hypo-textual level, textual levels, invariant features, divergent features, strong position, pragmatic function, stylistic device.
