Sociocultural Specificity of Discourse: The Interpretive Approach to Language Use

In discussions of the relation between language use and culture, it is often assumed that discourse construction reflects ethnic identities and patterns of behavior of its representatives. In the article, however, it is argued that discourse construction depends on contexts of sociocultural knowledge that language speakers activate as representatives of sociocultural groups. In this view, the process of discourse construction involves selection, classification and evaluation of objects within contexts of sociocultural knowledge. It is claimed that discourse construction is knowledge-dependent rather than culture-dependent. This dependence can be revealed by means of cognitive-discursive interpretant method of analysis.