Linguistic discoursology and units of discourse analysis: discourse component

The paper aims at discussing discoursology as a branch of linguistics, its object and units of discourse analysis. The cognitive semiotic approach the author uses to study the speech system is based on the idea that thought-to-speech processes are interconnected with fundamental phenomena and processes in the language system. The author pays attention to the fact that the terms “discourse” and “discourse analysis” haven’t yet been clearly defined in Russian linguistics as well as their correlation with the most widely used terms “speech”, “text”, “text analysis”. The author turns to the etymology and the origin of these terms, specifies their definitions, introduces a new term - “discourse component” - to denote a unit of discourse analysis, describes a set of discourse components at different levels of the speech system. The author insists that discourse components are speech signs that play the role of semantic markers forming structural, functional and communicative parameters of the speech system. Stating common and specific features of language and speech signs, the author emphasizes that speech semiosis, though having the common origin with language semiosis, possesses specific properties, the principle of emotiveness being the most prominent of them.