Abstract

The article is devoted to an acute and insufficiently studied issue—the issue of judgmental discourse. While the business language is considered clichéd and neutral, the cases of direct expression of attitude are attracting more attention nowadays. The article attempts to find out what functions judgmental discourse in general performs, as well as what the role and the functional load of a positive assessment is.

The material for the study covers excerpts from the business press with examples of positive assessment. The study was carried out using methods of analysis and synthesis, classification, functional-synergetic analysis served as a private scientific method.

The article shows that the perception of discourse is a complex phenomenon, subject to the laws of cognition. A language built linearly acquires multidimensional shades of meaning, being actualised in discourse. Consideration of discourse as a synergistic system of meanings highlights properties uncharacteristic for a linear system. For example, the communicative goal can be achieved through undertaking unexpected speech turns, and the use of implications can increase the rhetorical efficiency of an utterance.

The author analyses the three most common speech tactics used in judgmental discourse—praise, compliment/flattery, self-identification—and on their material describes synergistic properties—systemacy, openness, self-organisation, non-linearity and heterogeneity of the semantic system of discourse.

The study has shown that a positive assessment in the structure of judgmental discourse is widespread and is realised at various levels of the discourse system. In publicistic business discourse, judgment is used not just to express an attitude; it is a tool for forming an opinion, creating a certain image, expressing the position of a printed medium.

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