The paper deals with approaches to discourse studies. The approaches may be regarded as discourse dimensions associated with models presented and substantiated by M.M. Bakhtin, J. Habermas, Yu.M. Lotman and M.A.K. Halliday. They comprise contents, participants, tonality, channel and communicative actions. The approaches described complement each other and make it possible to synthesize the results achieved in Text Linguistics, Pragmatics, Social Linguistics, and Discourse Studies. They are joined by and oriented towards the concept of Language Personality, i.e. persons who manifest themselves in various kinds of communicative situations. However, each discourse dimension corresponds to a certain type of discourse. A Topic Approach to discourse focuses upon its contents (its referential substance) and specifies the correlation between explicit and implicit meaning expression. A Subject Approach to discourse makes it possible to single out and describe two basic types of communication as presented in Personality bound and Status bound discourse, the former diverges into two subtypes-Habitual and Existential communication, whereas the latter is manifested in various kinds of Institutional discourse. A Tonality Approach to discourse highlights different types of stylistic and emotional modes of communication and correspondingly characterizes personality types who are engaged in such situations. A Regime Approach is concentrated on communication channel and technical peculiarities of behavior determined by those restrictions. An Action Approach to discourse gives us a broader understanding of a performative act, i.e. an action incorporated in culture and a situational behavioral interaction.

Волгоградский государственный социально-педагогический университет пр. Ленина, 27, г. Волгоград, Россия, 400066 Рассматривается публичный политический дискурс на материале выступлений официальных лиц в Организации Объединенных Наций. Охарактеризованы подходы к изучению дискурса (тема-тический, институциональный, тональный и перформативный), выделены основные типы адресатов в политическом дискурсе (широкая публика, основные оппоненты, профессиональные интерпре-таторы). Выявлены два типа самопрезентации в докладах на международном форуме: акцентирова-ние интересов своего государства либо мирового сообщества. Стилистика выступлений докладчиков на сессии Генеральной Ассамблеи ООН соответствует канонам речи дипломатов, но в ряде случаев намеренно выходит за рамки этих канонов, что свидетельствует об экспансии медийно-развлекатель-ного дискурса в официально-дипломатическую коммуникацию. Тональность выступлений поли-тиков является важнейшим индикатором приоритетов, определяющих вероятность практических действий различных государств на международной арене.Ключевые слова: политический дискурс, институциональная коммуникация, адресатная спе-циализация, эмоционально-стилевой формат, вербальное поведение ВВЕДЕНИЕПубличный дискурс представляет собой вербальное общение с неопределенно широкой массой адресатов. Системообразующим признаком политического дис-курса является борьба за власть [Астафурова, Олянич 2008; Базылев 1998; Балашо-ва 2014; Баранов 1997; Блакар 1987; Будаев, Чудинов 2006; Водак 1997; Купина 1995; Попова 1995; Шейгал, 2004;Bergsdorf 1978; Diekman 1969;Dijk 1995;Zimmermann 1975]. В этом плане особенность публичного политического дискурса со-стоит в адресатной специализации -дифференцированном воздействии субъекта речи на разные типы адресатов, при этом такое воздействие часто осуществляется синкретично в одном и том же высказывании. Представляется, что для каждого типа институционального дискурса характерны определенные разновидности ад-ресатов, которые выделяются на основании базовых установок участников со-ответствующего дискурса. Адресатная специализация применительно к разным типам публичного дискурса еще недостаточно освещена в научной литературе [Карасик 2016; Попова 2011].В современном обществе политическая власть получает легитимный статус на основании демократического выбора населения, соответственно важнейшим адресатом публичного политического дискурса является широкая масса избира-

The paper deals with semiotic characteristics of comic texts construction. It is aimed at analyzing semantic, pragmatic and syntactic properties of jokes so as to find out models of comic texts comprehension. The material for the analysis comprises ca. 1000 jokes of various kinds including funny short narratives (in Russian these are named 'anecdotes'), humorous aphorisms and demotivators as a new genre of internet communication. Semantic and pragmatic mechanisms of comic texts differ, though methodologically they make inseparable unity, according to A. Wierzbicka. Semantically, comic texts represent caricature pictures of the reality concerning objects, time and space dimension of events and positions of agents. They may be described in terms of denotative and significative incongruences. Pragmatically, such mechanisms form evaluative and argumentative divergence between usual and given states of affairs which manifest themselves as collisions of interpretation scripts. Syntactically, comic texts may be interpreted in terms of their narrative, or descriptive or argumentative correlation with corresponding non-comic texts. Two models of such texts interpretation are discussed. The first one is dictal in its essence and is based on disagreement between the planes of reality as shown in the text, whereas the second one is modal and it reflects an incongruity between reality and the view of it. The dictal model includes such techniques as repetition, juxtaposition and reversing of agents positions, the modal model can be traced in jocular periphrasis, precedent text parodies, and comic allusions. The dictal model is oriented towards semantic disagreement between various aspects of reality, the modal model concerns mostly pragmatic and syntactic aspects of a comic world view. Modern communicative practice as represented in the Internet network communities is focused on self-representation and various jokes are inherent part of this objective. The jokes are often based on incongruity between theme and rheme in the message content and disagreement between image and text in its form.

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The paper deals with a linguistic and cultural conceptualization of reality. A symbolic dimension of a concept is analyzed on the basis of its notional, perceptive and axiological features. The concept BRIDGE has been described in its verbal representation in the Russian and English linguistic cultures. The material of the study includes definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias, textual samples from the Russian and English national corpuses, proverbs and aphorisms and poetic texts. Metaphorically, a bridge is understood as an opportunity to move on along the road via some natural obstacles, usually rivers. Symbolically, the following ideas come to the fore when applied to the concept BRIDGE: crossing an obstacle, raising up, possibility or impossibility of coming back, safety or insecurity. The novelty of the research consists in the description of these vectors of conceptualization of a BRIDGE as a cluster of the symbolic meanings of building or destroying a bridge and going up or falling down from it.