Specifics of syntactic structures of Russian business writing (compared with Arabic)

Al- Anbagi Shaymaa Thamer Hasan Postgraduate student, Department of Russian Language and Teaching Methods, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia shaimatamerhasan@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Shaklein Viktor Mikhailovich ORCID: 0000-0003-3576-3828 Doctor of Philology Professor; Department of Russian Language and Methods of Teaching; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia shaklein@rudn.ru

Introduction

Business communication has become firmly embedded in the communicative realities of modern man. The official business style, within which business correspondence develops, differs in the highest degree of standardness against the background of other functional styles of the language. It is characterized by the stability of the structure, content, and stylistic characteristics of the text, it is characterized by historically defined features that have developed during the development of the stylistic system of each language in general and the official business style in particular. At the same time, at the moment, a variety of facts, forms and spheres of language use are subject to transformations; business correspondence does not remain aloof from certain changes. In Russia and Arabic-speaking countries, the development of the official business style went its own way, and by the middle of the twentieth century. the style was formed in its main features, defined culturally and historically. Nowadays, the dynamics of business correspondence in Russian and Arabic are influenced by many factors: history, traditions, globalization, changes in ethical norms, etc. For the development of Russian business writing, an important factor was the change in the system of economic relations in Russia. In Soviet times, business correspondence was practically not conducted, since all economic issues were resolved through state regulation, which means that business writing as a genre of official business style did not develop. In the 1980s and 1990s, the situation changed, many private companies and firms appeared, which began to conduct business correspondence with each other, in addition, the importance of correspondence for organizations in the fields of education and management, for the diplomatic sphere increased. This caused an active development of business writing.

Literature review

The syntactic structure is one of the key characteristics of a business letter, because with the help of syntactic constructions, the letter receives its final design, its final appearance, in addition, syntactic constructions have the ability to translate certain meanings to the addressee implicitly, and therefore indirectly affect it. At the same time, the syntactic constructions of both Russian and Arabic business writing have been studied in linguistics to a lesser extent than units of other language levels, for example, lexical, graphic, spelling, morphological.

Business letters attract researchers by being less regulated than other official business documents and at the same time maintaining their legal force: "A business letter is a special type of document, less strictly regulated than a contract or resolution, but having legal significance" ^{[1, p. 85]}. N. A. Karaban analyzes introductory constructions and modal words in a business letter as a means of implementing the category of politeness ^{[2, p. 5]}. S. Yu. Fedyurko and O. A. Androsova notes the influence of communicative correspondence tasks on the syntax of business writing ^{[3, p. 105]}. E. Y. Kuzmina reveals the predominance of uncomplicated common sentences with various minor terms in Russian business writing ^{[4, p. 3]}. Some innovations in the syntax of Russian business writing (exclamation points, slogans, expressive syntax phenomena) reveals A.V. Mikhailova ^{[5, pp. 16-17]}. M. G. Golikova notes changes in the syntactic level of business writing associated with its transition to electronic format ^{[6, p. 20]}. It affects the syntax of Russian business speech and the introduction of elements of conversational style into it ^{[7, p. 105]}. The syntax of modern Russian business writing is analyzed in fragments; consideration of the syntactic features of Arabic business correspondence can be seen in general in isolated publications. For example, A. K. Shaban mentions that syntactic means are one of the ways of expressing politeness here ^{[8, p. 13]}.

In general, it cannot be said that the syntactic structure of modern Russian and Arabic business writing is well studied in linguistics. There are still many gaps and issues that have not been touched upon by scientists, which, we believe, it is productive to consider using a comparative approach.

Russian Russian business writing The purpose of the article is to identify the main features of the syntactic structure characteristic of Russian business writing at this stage of its development by comparing the structure of Russian and Arabic business writing.

The texts of business letters in Russian and Arabic became the material for practical research. The country of origin of the letters of Arabic–speaking correspondents is Iraq. About three hundred letters were reviewed, 200 of which serve correspondence within Russia, about 100 – international correspondence in Russian and Arabic between Russian and Iraqi business circles (in the field of diplomacy, education, trade, etc.).

The results of the study

A list of basic, standard syntactic constructions, the use of which is typical for Russian business writing, is found in the educational and scientific literature, where they include:

– direct word order in a sentence;

– the predominance of common simple narrative sentences of large volume;

– passive syntactic constructions;

– the use of definitively personal and infinitive sentences;

– predicate splitting: to exert influence instead of influence;

– the use of rows of homogeneous terms, including those with numbering;

– stringing cases: to solve the problem of increasing sales;

– the predominance of the union connection over the non - union one in a complex sentence;

– rare use of introductory words, etc. ^{[9, pp. 261-275]}.

These features have been developed in Russian business writing throughout the history of its development and are standard, form the basis of its syntactic structure. T. V. Sushentsova notes that they act as characteristic of the syntactic structure and modern business documents, since their use is "subordinated to the pragmatic attitude of the text itself" ^{[10, p. 68]}. One cannot disagree with this, but I would like to focus on those transformations of traditional syntactic structures that are observed in modern Russian business writing.

Firstly, there are changes, the purpose of which is to strengthen the personal nature of business correspondence, increase the role of the author in it, and a clearer manifestation of his personality. If earlier the author of a business letter was on the periphery of the communicative business space, was unimportant, now his personality is increasingly becoming manifest. The secondary position of the author is achieved in a business letter through the use of passive syntactic constructions ("In case of interest, an official commercial offer will be sent to you") and definitely personal offers ("We guarantee that the products of our factory supplied to your order comply with GOST and the requirements contained in the order"). At the same time, the author takes a back seat, his position is broadcast as less important than the business issues being discussed. In modern Russian-language business letters, there are sentences where the position of the author is more definite, and he himself is named using the subject in a two-part sentence. The name of the "collective entity" is most often used with the pronoun we: "We highly appreciate our cooperation and hope to continue it in the future." The pronoun I is still unacceptable in business speech.

In Arabic business writing, the position of the subject is not expressed by means of a pronoun in connection with the grammatical features of the Arabic language, the sentences of which consist "of the conjugated form of the verb, including both the action and the acting subject" ^{[11, p. 317]}. For example:

يسرنى أن اتقدم إليكم يا سيادة ... المحترم بأحر التهاني

A possible translation option includes the pronoun: "I am glad to convey my warmest congratulations to you," however, the subject and action have merged in the structure of the Arabic sentence, so there is no pronoun. The expression of subjectivity, the accentuation of the personality of the author of the letter occurs here with the help of other tools. In particular, in an Arabic business letter, it is mandatory to indicate all the author's regalia, his academic titles and other information demonstrating his deserving dignity. In general, Arabic business writing is based on the collective nature of Arab culture, and concentration on the personality of the author is unacceptable here.

Secondly, in modern Russian-language business writing, the syntactic means of expressing imperativeness are changing.

For the authors of business letters, it is important to convey to the addressees the motivation, which is translated, among other things, through syntactic constructions, which can be called nuclear means of expressing imperativeness ^{[12, p. 61]}. Influencing the addressee, encouraging him to commit some kind of action is one of the main goals of the author of the letter. Russian business correspondence traditionally uses means of indirect expression of imperative. For example, the indicative mood can be used instead of the imperative: "For the second time, we remind you of the need to submit an estimate for the construction of the facility at the address... no later than December 15 of the current year. Otherwise, this facility will be excluded from the work plan of our company." In this case, the incentive is reinforced by indicating the possible consequences of non-compliance with the terms of the contract. Imperativeness can be expressed using infinitive sentences, which are combined into a list with clear instructions of what the partner should do: "1. Create an operational headquarters. 2. To carry out an urgent inventory of the state of natural and artificial hydraulic systems ...". The impersonality of such constructions reduces the degree of direct impact on the addressee, reduces the pressure on him.

Two opposite trends are observed in modern Russian business writing. The urge, on the one hand, can soften even more, on the other – become more direct, lose its veiling. In the first case, for example, the addressee may remain demonstratively polite even if the addressee violates the terms of the contract and terminates a business partnership with him: "Despite the suspension of service, we look forward to resuming cooperation with you in the future." In the second case, the imperative begins to be transmitted directly, with the help of incentive suggestions: "Fill out these forms and send them within the specified time frame." These changes, in our opinion, are related to the above-mentioned increase in the personal nature of Russian-language correspondence. The authors of the letters deviate from the standard forms of expression of imperativeness, formulating the motivation in the way they consider necessary and permissible. Perhaps the appearance of such forms is connected with the history of the Russian official business style, which goes back to the conversational style, and therefore is able to reflect the speech specifics of the speaker.

According to tradition, modern Arabic business writing is characterized by indirect forms of imperative expression. Other forms common in oral speech cannot penetrate here, since special forms of imperative "raja" and "vadda" are used here, to some extent corresponding to the subjunctive mood ^{[13, p. 30]}. For example:

نحن طلبنا ان ترسل الینا اخر قائمة بالمبیعات

Translation: "Could you send us...". Perhaps this syntactic feature of Arabic business writing is due to the fact that the official business style in Arabic goes back to the artistic, and not to the colloquial style, as in Russian, and cannot be directly influenced by it.

Currently, business communication is mainly carried out via the Internet, e-mail, designed to serve institutions and enterprises, which is associated with the convenience and speed of information transfer. Interestingly, in electronic business correspondence, where the social distance between the author and the addressee is reduced ^{[14, p. 76]}, both Russian and Arabic business letters show similar transformations, including those concerning the syntactic structure. Perhaps this is due, firstly, to the fact that global trends are stronger in the Internet sphere, it is more influenced by the global communication space, and secondly, to the fact that communication on the Internet acquires many qualities of oral speech. Let's call these transformations:

– simplification of the framework details of the letter, primarily the initial ones, of which only the appeal can remain, since the rest (departure time, date, addressee, etc.) are indicated automatically;

– simpler syntax, shorter sentences;

– the use of interrogative and exclamation points.

As you can see, these features relate to simplifying the syntactic structure and increasing the emotionality of writing, that is, they really reflect the tendency to penetrate into it in electronic form the features of oral speech, reducing the level of formality. In addition, both the Russian and Arabic business e-mail express the personal nature of the correspondence more clearly, and the author's personality is more clearly visible behind its text. Writing is becoming more individualized, while largely maintaining standardization and regulation.

Conclusion

Business correspondence in various countries of the modern world is acquiring more and more similarities due to the globalization of the world space, the strengthening of international business ties, and the influence of the European tradition on global business communication. The syntactic structure of business letters is also being changed. In particular, in Russian business writing, constructions appear that reflect the strengthening of the personal nature of business correspondence, for example, two-part sentences, and the number of constructions with which the personal character is not expressed is reduced: passive, definitely personal sentences. Syntactic ways of expressing imperativeness are transformed by reducing sentences with direct motivation. The syntax of Arabic business writing is more stable and retains standard syntactic constructions to a greater extent, which we associate with its history. Unlike the Russian official business style, it goes back not to the spoken, but to the artistic style and to a lesser extent allows the appearance of structures characteristic of oral speech. At the same time, the collective nature of Arabic business communication prevents the manifestation of the individuality of the author of the letter. In electronic business communication, the changes are more pronounced and occur not only in Russian, but also in Arabic business writing, which reflects the greater democracy of this sphere of communication, its global nature and the penetration of oral speech features into it.

The prospects of the research conducted in this paper consist in analyzing the most relevant trends in the development of Russian and Arabic business correspondence, which are currently becoming more and more numerous due to the intensification of interaction between Russia and Arabic-speaking countries.