D. V. Demidov

Communicative Syntax. It is primarily concerned with 
the analysis of utterances from the point of their communicative 
value and informative structure. It deals with the actual division of 
the utterance – the theme and rheme analysis (see Lecture 7). Both 
the theme and the rheme constitute the informative structure of 
utterances. The theme is something that is known while the rheme 
represents some new information. Depending on the contextual 
informative value any element can act as the theme or the rheme:
Who is at home? – John is at home. Where is John? – John 
is at home. 
Pragmatic approach to the study of syntactic units can 
briefly be described as the study of the way language is used in 
particular contexts to achieve particular goals. Speech Act 
Theory was first introduced by John Austin. The notion of a 
speech act presupposes that an utterance can be said with different 

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intentions or purposes and therefore can influence the speaker and 
situation in different ways: 
I just state the fact; 
. I want you to do smth. about it (close the window);
It’s cold here‖: I‘m threatening you; 
I‘m seeking for an excuse for not doing smth.; 
I want you to feel guilty of it. 
Etc. 
Accordingly, we can distinguish different speech acts.
Of special interest here is the problem of indirect speech 
acts: Are you leaving already? In our everyday activities we use 
indirect speech acts because it is the best way to influence people, 
to get what we want and to be polite at the same time.
Textlinguistics studies the text as a syntactic unit, its main 
features and peculiarities, different ways of its analysis.
Discourse analysis focuses on the study of language use 
with reference to the social and psychological factors that 
influence communication.