Principles of system modeling of the genre (exemplified by texts of natural written speech)

The article determines the problems of modern speech genre modeling and proposes a method for solving them. The methodology for describing the speech genre in modern linguistics needs to work out principles that are focused on system design. In genre modeling, at the present stage, the main tendency towards the so-called “portraiture” (passportization) has formed. The logical result was the accumulation of many essay works, which introduce diverse descriptions of individual genres without revealing their system characteristics. As a productive technology for speech genre description, a universal methodology of functional modeling is being developed. It allows constructing the genres with the parameters of regularity, commitment and oppositional character. Considering the genre model as a complex structure, the author describes its constituting modules in their syntagmatic interaction. The hypothesis of formal transformational modeling is put forward: an oppositional change in the typical structure of a module entails de-structuring, and decay of the speech genre. The article describes some stages in the formal transformational modeling of a genre module. In order to identify the attributive content of the genre, an analysis according to the so-called communicative-semiotic model was chosen as a productive method. A methodology of transformational opposition analysis is being developed. It arises from the idea of combinatorial and contrastive functions attribution to the author's modules of the genre. Substitutional analysis is performed by correlating the selected module of the genre with the same module of another genre in order to identify differentiation between them. The proposed principle of describing the genre is postulated as a method of objective modeling.