Features of academic discourse

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the features of academic discourse in diachronic and comparative aspects. The first part of the work systematizes theoretical approaches to defining discourse and identifying its institutional characteristics; it provides an overview of the key definitions proposed by N.D. Arutyunova, V.I. Karasik, A.A. Kibrik, E.S. Kubryakova, T.A. van Dijk, V.E. Chernyavskaya, G.G. Slyshkin, and other researchers. In the second part, based on the work of Theobald Ziegler, professor of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (The German Student at the End of the 19th Century), published in Leipzig in 1908, the key concepts of German academic discourse («student», «professor», «university») are reconstructed. The obtained results are compared with the empirical data from T.Ya. Zaglyadkina's dissertation (2009), which makes it possible to trace the transformation of the academic conceptual sphere from an idealized model to a functional-pragmatic one. It is revealed that while the formal core of the concepts is preserved, their axiological content has undergone a cardinal shift: the «temple of science» has been replaced by a «workplace» and the «aristocratism of the spirit» by functional competencies.