Biletska T. The Category of Deixis in Hypertext (based on product descriptions on commercial websites).

The thesis gives insight into the universal category of deixis, which encompasses a range of deictic elements present in any language. The research focuses on the discursive and pragmatic characteristics of deictic elements in the texts of product description on commercial websites and, therefore, reveals the argumentative potential of deictic elements in product descriptions and identifies the peculiarities of the hypertext deixis. The category of deixis is defined as a system of linguistic means used in discourse so as to correlate its content with the elements of communicative situation (participants, place and time of communication). In discourse deixis is manifested via deictic elements – language units with the meaning determined by reference to the components of the speech act. The deictic centre of discourse is the location of the speaker at the moment of communication. The study highlights the structural and semantic features of commercial websites and proves that being an Internet-discourse genre formed by both verbal and non-verbal components of the communicative context, product descriptions are the main means of communication in Internet-shops. The texts of product description contain the deictic elements of all three classical types of deixis – personal, spatial and temporal. The deictic elements with the highest frequency constitute the basis for actualization of the category of deixis on commercial websites.