Motivational discourse and its place in the discursive knowledge system / Мотивационный дискурс и его место в системе дискурсивного знания

Птукян Армен Рубенович ORCID: 0000-0002-1969-5362 аспирант; кафедра Теории и практики иностранных языков; Российский университет дружбы народов 117198, Россия, г. Москва, ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 9 Ptukyan Armen Rubenovich Postgraduate student; Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 9 armen.ptukyan@gmail.com

To analyze and understand motivational discourse, it is important to take into account concepts such as motive and motivation, which explain the characteristics of discourse: encouraging an individual to take certain actions, changing behavior through speech ^{[1, p. 42]}. Motivational speech and, in particular, motivational discourse have such characteristics as expressiveness and emotionality, and high focus on the recipient. Motivational discourse is aimed at changing aspects of the recipient’s worldview and forming a new attitude towards reality events. Thus, motivational discourse is a discourse of influence. Considering discourse in this way, we can find that motivational discourse is a specific construct consisting of linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena. It is especially important to take into account the personal properties of the speaker and the recipient, in the context of the social mechanisms that generate and construct motivational discourse as such. J. Sullivan introduces the concept of a special so-called “motivational language” ^[2]. In his opinion, motivational language is the language used by supervisors or managers when managing a team. It is worth emphasizing that the utterance is at the center of the discourse. Its main quality as a unit of communication in this case is its communicative relevance, its role in a specific communicative situation.

The communicative process depends on many factors, including the participants in communication, the context of communication, the psychological and physical characteristics of the communicants, as well as their value systems, etc. Within the same communicative situation, the expression of thoughts and ideas can take different forms, which is determined by specific conditions - context of communication. ^{[3, p. 51]}. Each person has their own special set of communication practices, based on previous communication experience and applied in certain situations. The institutional nature of communication is one of the main criteria for classifying types of discourse. This classification is characterized by a certain set of communication situations typical for a given sphere, typical models of speech behavior of performers of certain social roles, certain topics of communication, intentions and speech strategies ^[4]. It should be noted that a certain topic or focus of communication can become the main dominant element of the discourse. This may give rise to temporary or periodic discourses related to the topic, depending on the degree and duration of interest in it in the society where the discourse takes place. Usually, such discourses are expressed within the framework of other types of discourse and are called thematic discourses. Motivational discourse includes such genres as a motivating speech by a leader at a corporate event, parting speeches, a speech by a captain or coach before a responsible event or competition, religious sermons, as well as speeches by political and motivational speakers.

Speech genres that are included in motivational discourse can be divided into two categories: institutional and personal types. The first type includes motivational speeches, within the academic (commencement speech at the graduation ceremony), administrative (motivational speech by the head of an organization/group or structural unit), political (speeches by politicians), religious (sermon) types of discourses. The second type includes speeches of various motivational speakers - coaches and tutors, whose communicative activities are aimed at developing the personal growth of the addressee. In special motivational literature on the topic of self-improvement, as well as the development of personal and professional qualities, an important place is occupied by the stories of people, which are presented to the reader as evidence of the thoughts and messages of the author. A similar method, based on cases - cases from practice, has gained wide popularity and has become a characteristic feature of the professional work of coaches, as well as in the literature devoted to this area. It can be noted that motivational discourse is increasingly taking the form of a narrative, where meaning is conveyed through a story and sequential presentation.

Everyday oral communication most often takes place within the framework of dialogue. Participants in communication can change the communicative roles of speaker and recipient, and can ask again, clarify, and comment on each other’s statements in the process. Dialogue often takes place in typical, frequently repeated communication situations. And the rules of behavior and communication means can be determined by speech etiquette, which is considered in linguistics as a particularly significant characteristic of a certain linguistic culture. A special group includes situationally determined expressions, which, according to I. Kecskes, are highly conventional (stereotypical) stable (ready-made) pragmatic units, whose use is tied to standard communicative situations and is closely related to the actual situational context ^{[5- 8]}. This expression as a unit of speech correlates with a certain fragment of foreign language reality and is expressed at the moment of a certain speech situation.

A. N. Prikhodko identifies a discursive act, defining it as a unit of speech action, which is part of the interaction and represents a chain of speech acts united by a common teleological setting into a single speech block. In this block, different illocutionary forces with different (primary and secondary) pragmatic meanings are combined, change, intersect and interact ^{[9, p. 103]}. In determining the pragmasemantic properties of discursive acts, an important role is played by such characteristics as place, goals, tasks of the communicant, time, etc. This is primarily due to the fact that the pragmatic potential of discursive acts consists of both intralinguistic and extralinguistic factors. Speech and discourse acts are similar in many ways, since they have the same cognitive-communicative nature. They allow you to transmit information and regulate the communication process. However, there are also differences between them, which makes it possible to distinguish them into a separate class of speech units. Thus, discursive acts can either coincide with speech acts or include several speech acts, while speech acts, being the minimum unit of speech activity, are indivisible in their structure. A speech act has one goal; a discursive act can have several goals. They can also intersect and combine with each other. In addition, a speech act is realized by verbal means of communication; in a discursive act, along with verbal means, non-verbal ones are also used, namely gestures, facial expressions, sounds, etc. Considering a discursive act as a separate category, several types can be distinguished. Offeratives (requests, demands, proposals, persuasion) are used when the speaker wants to induce the recipient to take some active action for the benefit of him or himself. Conformatives and nonconformatives (agreement, approval, praise, disagreement, refusal, disapproval) are used as a reaction to the offerative and are used in conflict or benevolent communication. Accusatives (accusation, condemnation, claim, indignation, reproach) are used to accuse the interlocutor of something. Apologetics (justification, apology, repentance, forgiveness) are a response to accusatives. Apologetics can be used in cases of admission or non-admission of guilt. Didactives (advice, teaching, moralizing, hint) are aimed at inducing the recipient to take some action to improve a certain situation. It is worth emphasizing that any discursive acts consist of several speech blocks, illocutionary goals and illocutionary forces. We can highlight that offeratives have the greatest illocutionary power. This is especially important because it allows you to tune the recipient to a positive response ^{[10, p. 117]}. Addressing the audience directly and using verbs in an indicative form also increases motivational power and emotional response.

The analysis of speech means, which have a pronounced situational and sociocultural characteristic in the English and Russian languages, seems to be one of the most important components of the study of motivational discourse. Political discourse, for example, is formulated as institutional communication, which, in contrast to personality-oriented communication, uses a certain system of professionally oriented signs. The main distinguishing feature of motivational discourse, which allows us to define it as a separate type of discourse, is its focus on the audience. It is important to emphasize that the speaker’s intentionality is directly dependent on the addressee. Motivational discourse refers to a person-oriented type of discourse, which is aimed not at an abstract, abstract addressee, as for example in political discourse, but at a specific person taking part in communication ^{[11, p. 5]}. The goal that the speaker seeks to achieve is expressed in the desire to transform the addressee’s attitude towards the phenomena of reality and, as a result, will affect his behavior ^{[12, p. 126]}. It is worth noting that motivational discourse differs in its ability to be formed in various professional fields ^[13]. Considering motivational discourse from the point of view of the content plan, we can define it as a certain type of influence, the process of instilling ideas in the addressee, emotional and/or rational motivation to perform certain actions or motivation for activity. The plane of expression can be represented by a number of speech genres, for example, various kinds of motivational speeches and sermons and incentive speech acts, in particular, suggestives.

Common to rhetorical discourses and motivational discourse, in particular, the communicative strategy is aimed at encouraging the recipient to perform some action through persuasion. Speech utterances, where the author seeks to influence the recipient, are traditionally classified as persuasive utterances. The persuasive communicative strategy is determined by the pragmatic intention of the speaker and represents the dominant functional characteristic of the discourse, its main conceptual and thematic setting with a focus on the perlocutionary effect that the speaker strives to achieve. It is possible to simultaneously divide speech influence into persuasive and suggestive. In the second case, there is some lack of control on the part of consciousness when receiving and processing information by the recipient in the second case ^{[14, p. 25–26]}. Thus, persuasiveness is achieved by influencing logical thinking, while suggestion activates the emotional and sensory perception of the recipient. Variability of influence in one direction or the other is found in specific examples of discourse. It can be noted that in scientific discourse the dominant mechanism is persuasiveness. In motivational discourse, influence prevails not so much through logic as through emotional and personal appeal. It is important to emphasize that the suggestions used by motivational speakers are introduced into their speech covertly, however, logical arguments do not disappear completely. They are used as an additional means in organizing and structuring irrational images, connections and associations. In motivational discourse, we can find such statements, the purpose of which demonstrates the speaker’s desire to inspire the addressee, to encourage him to perform a certain activity. The success of this depends on many factors, which determines the effectiveness of the persuasion and is reflected in the potential response of the recipient. It is worth noting that in his address the speaker seeks to convey not so much information as to influence the personality of the interlocutor. The use of language in this context appears as an implicit desire to convey and instill one's interpretation of the world. For example, the power of persuasion in motivational discourse comes down to argumentation skills along with mastery of speech techniques and methods of influence, determined by a certain functional style. However, it is worth emphasizing that there may be difficulties associated with the interpretation of the message by its recipient, who is capable, ready or willing to perceive this message in order to change personal ideas and values.

We can conclude that persuasion is not only the transfer of certain meanings using influence techniques on the part of the speaker, but also the voluntary agreement on the part of the recipient to accept the proposed picture of the world. It is important to note that the common intention for all rhetorical texts, including motivational ones, implies the presence of a unified communicative strategy of text formation in rhetorical metadiscourse. The presence of this communicative strategy is confirmed by the identification of common communicative-pragmatic features in rhetorical texts at different levels of mental-communicative organization (cognitive, functional-communicative, pragmatic, linguistic) ^{[15, p. 114]}. At the practical level, persuasive strategy is considered as a process of selection and combination operations, thematic design and textual coding of communicative actions under the control of a corresponding strategic goal, which are carried out by the speaker to realize the communicative goal. To do this, speakers use a variety of speech means to enhance the motivational potential of their speech.

Motivational discourse is located at the intersection of disciplines, which adds versatility to this concept. It also implies some complexity in defining the term. However, we can define motivational discourse as a speech statement of a persuasive nature, created by a person in the process of interaction and containing motivational constructs (implicit and explicit). At the moment, a methodology for identifying and constructing a universal model of subgenres of motivational discourse has not been developed, nor has a general theory been established for determining the communicative-pragmatic functions that are reflected by stylistic varieties of discourse and their textual representations ^{[16, p. 70]}. Thus, identifying a non-universal interpretation of the term “motivational discourse,” as well as developing a typology of this type of discourse, is a difficult task. In a broad sense, a person's motivational discourse can be related to the subject's motivational language, the way a person uses a particular language to express what motivates him and to try to understand what motivates others. The key specificity of motivational discourse is determined by its goal, namely to motivate the recipient. This is due to the desire of the speaker to exert some influence on the listener, influence decision-making and change his vector of thinking.