DISCURSIVE SPACE OF SPANISH POPULAR SCIENCE IT-DISCOURSE: ARCHITECTONICS, CONTENT, FUNCTIONALITY

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the ‘discursive space' concept, in general, and its realization in Spanish popular science sphere of IT, in particular, as an indispensable element of substantial linguistic investigation. The paper gives rationale behind the investigation by justifying the fact that discursive space needs to be analyzed from three interrelated perspectives, namely: its structural composition, topical and linguistic content, and functional diapason of its discursive markers. Proving that Spanish popular science IT-discourse belongs to one of the most productive areas for multiplex linguistic research, the main focus of the article is on the analysis of discursive space formation. The main purpose of the article consists in the integrated analysis of contemporary Spanish popular science IT-discourse in order to single out the dominant features of this discursive space in terms of its textual and spatial architectonics, topical and linguistic content, as well as the functionality of those elements. In order to meet the objectives of the research, the author resorts to continuous sampling method with corpus data collection, functional analysis, discourse analysis, and statistical data analysis. The obtained results let us conclude that Spanish popular science IT-discourse has the following range of discursive markers which shape the perlocutionary effect of its discursive space: terminological units, colloquialisms, set phrases, discursive formulas (conversational gambits), inversions, intensifiers, slang, idioms. The analysis of each given discursive marker allows us to state their pragmatic-communicative charge and reveals the whole functional spectrum, taking into account the functional diapason of both architectonic and discursive elements. It is also shown that all the discursive markers tend to collaborate with one another, leading to a strong functional synergistic effect, when the combined usage of several discursive markers provides the pragmatic charge of a much greater magnitude rather than a simple sum of pragmatic charges produced by each of the markers separately.