Sushko-Bezdenezhnykh M. Linguopragmatics of the German constitutional discourse: the diachronic aspect

The object of the study: constitutional discourse of Germany, embodied in the texts of federal German constitutions (1848–2014 рр.). The purpose of the work: description (ascertainment?) of the historical dynamics of structural, semantic, illocutionary and sociopragmatic characteristics of German constitutional discourse by means of investigating its diachronic invariables and variables. Methods: modeling, structural and semantic analysis, lexical analysis, content analysis, intent analysis, contextual analysis, speech act analysis, analysis of discourse strategies und tactics, comparative method, elements of qualitative methods. Scientific novelty: the dissertation investigates the historical dynamics of the German constitutional discourse viewed as a mental-communicative activity taking place in the legislative sphere; it embraces the lawgiving process and its result – the integral complex of the texts of all the federal constitutions of Germany; the analysed texts demonstrate the tendency towards the gradual “attenuation” of evaluation and figurativeness and the increasing use of euphemisms; diachronic changes on the propositional level are of both quantitative and qualitative nature; as holistic communicative units, the German constitutions represent explicit performatives with the illocutionary force of Volition (that includes Declarative, Directive and Commissive); treating them as complexes of separate utterances, we single out 18 illocutionary subtypes of volitional speech acts; their quantity proportions within each text depend on the preferred communicative tactics of the lawmakers. Practical importance: research results can be used in teaching stylistics of German language, general linguistics, communication theory as well as for scientific work of students and post-graduate students. The effect of the introduction is high. The areas of use: higher education institutions.