FUNCTIONALITY OF UNIVERSITY DISCOURSE (BASED ON THE OFFICIAL PAGE OF CHELYABINSK STATE UNIVERSITY IN VKONTAKTE)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to university discourse, the popularity of which is increasing nowadays mainly due to its big, targeted audience (students of a university, graduates from schools who intend to enter a university, secondary school students and their parents, teaching personnel etc.) and peculiarities of language and style. The analysis, which is aimed at identifying what functions university discourse serves and what functions prevail, thus proving to be the most appealing ones, is based on the official page of Chelyabinsk State University in VKontakte. The research material consists of 350 posts placed in January 2023 – June 2024. The research reveals the most frequently used functions are informative (49%), emotive (22%) and pragmatic (18%). Informative function helps to convey all the important information to the recipient in a concise way. Emotive function is represented by the usage of emotionally-coloured vocabulary which is appealing to the audience. Pragmatic function is used to attract the recipients’ attention and encourage them to perform certain actions. The other important thing the research demonstrates is that the dominant number of posts serve several functions simultaneously. This combination of functions helps to achieve greater results and attract more audience to the university.