INSTITUTIONALITY AND PERSONALITY OF THE LETTER OF PETITION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF GERMAN-LANGUAGE LETTERS OF PETITION OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

Abstract

The article analyses the discourse of 19th-century German-language letters in terms of the practical and social linguistic paradigm. The language study as a social phenomenon is impossible without taking into account institutional statuses and roles, since it is these that constitute the individual as a social being. Institutional discourse is representative communication, dominated by status-role rather than personal-oriented meanings. It should be noted, however, that institutional discourse in its pure form is relatively rare. In real communication, discourses can “mutate” into adjacent ones, the degree of presence of personal meanings can vary depending on the type of discourse and the communication situation. The question of “purity of discourse”, the relationship of its personal and institutional components is, in the authors’ opinion, a clear research interest and is one of the key problems of this work.