The current state of the problem of studying and teaching foreign language legal discourse is presented. Various points of view on discourse as an interdisciplinary phenomenon are analyzed. Legal discourse is considered as a kind of institutional discourse. Communication of participants in legal discourse is carried out on the basis of a certain number of rules that govern their role and normative behavior. In their actions, there is coordination inherent in this form of communication and allowing the participants in legal discourse to be perceived as components of a single whole – a larger institutional system. A brief description of the functions of legal discourse is given – prescriptive, informative, argumental, declarative, regulatory, interpretive, cumulative, presentation, strategic and code. Such properties of legal discourse as performativity and intertex-tuality are discussed, and its components are described. The difference between legal texts, in which the discourse of law is implemented, from texts of other specialties is shown. They are created in the legal language as a type of language for special purposes and have intra- and exter-nal-text specificity. Legal texts, in spite of their genre variety, have a predominantly standard for-mat. Such types of legal text as court decisions and regulations, powers of attorney and contracts, wills, etc., have a specific construction plan, are divided into parts in a certain way and are drawn up graphically. Discursive analysis is considered as the most acceptable method of studying and teaching a foreign language of law.

The study aims to prove that there are advantages of using discourse analysis in teaching a professional foreign language to law students. The article examines in great detail a comprehensive approach to teaching the United States legal discourse to foreign students, developed by C. Hoffman and implemented at Georgetown University. The authors propose content of the legal English course for the Russian law students of senior years and describe the steps necessary to organise a class session with discourse analysis involvement. Scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying advantage of using discourse analysis in legal English acquisition. As a result of the research, it is proved that through the use of discourse analysis, students get an opportunity to familiarise with specificities of a foreign legal system and a target language itself in the context of the presented sample of legal discourse.

The monograph is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of "discourse" from the perspective of its institutionality. The focus of research interest is sports discourse, presented in the form of a complex conceptual space with a particular genre-stylistic and pragmatic characteristics. As a material of study are sports articles, sports interviews and sports commentary, considered as genres of sports discourse, allocated according to criteria focus of the text and its function. The use of frame analysis, content analysis and conversational analysis have shown the peculiarities of representation of speech and thoughts of individuals, operating in the conditions of specific discursive practices. Addressed to specialists in the field of language theory, cognitive linguistics, decorology, pragmatics, teachers, postgraduates and students.