Klaipėdos universitetas

Business discourse is unidentifiable apart from its own specific metatext that is to be treated as a text which incorporates a paradigm of previously produced texts for similar (or identical) pragmatic purposes under similar (or identical) social conditions in order to perform intended mutually intelligible communicative functions. The purpose is to establish a relation between the communicative types of business texts and dominant linguistic strategies that are applied in order to realise the communicative functions of informing, persuasion, and reporting in institutional business communication.

In order to be distinguished from the conventional verbal interactional context deliberate violations of the metadiscursive matrix are employed: 1) the informal register instead of the formal; 2) gradable adjectives and superlatives violate the expectation of objectivity and accuracy; 3) the self-conscious pragmatic-rhetoric strategies; 4) ample use of vulgarisms and offensive addresses; 5) a diversity of rhetoric means. These idiosyncratic variations function as the strategy of identification with the audience, and the effects achieved are as follows: 1) gaining attention; 2) distinguishing oneself from the context of similar speakers; 3) gaining and demonstrating power; 4) suspense; 5) convincing and persuasion for taking action.