terms

The article deals with the key concepts used in the analysis of autobiographical literature. The Russian and foreign science is acknowledged to lack the terminological precision in their application which leads to the notions and literary genres being diffused. The author analyzes the definition of the autobiography genre introduced by a French literary scholar Ph. Lejeune, as well as the polemic debate on his concept in the Western criticism of the 1950s–1970s, which revealed the fact that the real range of autobiographical works is significantly more diverse.

Тhe article tests the hypothesis that in the history of the speech genres theory and the journal/collection of articles “Speech Genres”, some structural – linguistic, stylistic, textual – patterns have developed in the “average” article on speech genres (namely: an article in the journal / collection of articles “Speech Genres”).