Kabiri M. Self-Presentation as a Strategy of the English Discourse

The object matter of the research being utterances that present the speaker in the English-language discourse, its subject comprises the strategic characteristics of these utterances. The study aims at defining self-presentation as a cognitive-communicative phenomenon and revealing its strategic potential in the English-language discourse. The major scientific methods are analysis, synthesis and introspection; cognitive modeling; contextual analysis; inferential and transformational analysis; syntactic-semantic, pragmalinguistic, conceptual and intentional analysis; analysis of discourse strategies. The features indicating that the study is new and original are the following: it is the first to argue that self-presentation is a discursive phenomenon and to model the communicative situation of self-presentation; the study is pioneering the approach to SELF-PRESENTATION as a local discourse strategy and reveals its specific character – the ability to be employed by different global strategies in the English-language discourse; it also proposes an innovative research model which allows to establish the set of speech strategies and tactics of SELF-PRESENTATION, to systematically describe the features proper to utterances self-presentemes in each tactic group, to reveal the potential of English-language discourse global strategies employing SELF-PRESENTATION and to consider the correlations between these global strategies and the utterances self-presentemes of different tactic groups used in their realizations; the new principles for describing the features of utterances self-presentemes are also suggested. Utterances self-presentemes’ complex study includes the analysis of their verbal features, content, ways of presenting the content (explicit / implicit), their cognitive features, namely, their mental base – propositional schemes as described by S. A. Zhabotynska and their situational links. Theoretical significance of the research derives from its contribution to discourse studies; cognitive linguistics; communicative linguistics; pragmatics / speech act theory. Practical significance of the paper consists in the ability of its theoretical postulates and practical results to contribute to the courses of: Theoretical Grammar of English Language, General Linguistics, to special courses of Discourse Studies, Communicative Linguistics, Pragmatics, Communication Strategies, Communication Theory; to practical courses of English language and translation, and also to scientific studies of undergraduate and graduate students.