SELF-HELP TITLE: PRAGMATICS, SYNTACTICS, SEMANTICS

Abstract

The article focuses on titles of the texts belonging to the motivational success genre. The texts of the genre under investigation are manuals on achieving success which aim to teach readers to help themselves live successfully and prosperously in the rapidly changing world. The research aims at exploring the pragmatic, syntactic and semantic features of self-help titles. The study was based on 70 titles, selected by the method of continuous sampling on Amazon.com.
It has been found that the title complex (a two-tier structure consisting of the main title and the subtitle) is typical for self-help texts. The two elements of such a complex differ in their pragmatics. The functions of self-help titles have been highlighted and described. The key elements (mostly nouns and adjectives that verbalize genre concepts SUCCESS and MONEY) in the titles in question inform about the content of the texts without touching their details. In addition, such elements attract the intended reader – the representative of the modern American society of consumers for whom the highest steps in the hierarchy of values are occupied by material goods. It has been proven that self-help titles intrigue and excite the addressee's imagination, and, by outlining the subject matter, act as a kind of advertising of their texts. Moreover, imperative titles encourage the addressee to take action.
In the course of the research, three structural-syntactic models of self-help titles have been identified. The major function of self-help titles – to capture the prospective reader’s interest – is facilitated by the dominant syntactic model of the nominal title, the expressiveness and the semantics of the titles.