Tactics of Refuting the Cognitive Stereotype About the Genre and Style of Popular Science Text in Author’s Prefaces

The article considers the tactics of refuting the cognitive stereotype regarding the genre and stylistic specificity of popular science texts in author’s prefaces. The material of the study is author’s prefaces to popular science texts in the format of a separate publication (book) on linguistic and psychological topics. As a result of the analysis of the material, three cognitive stereotypes about the genre and style of popular science texts were identified, which are refuted in the author’s prefaces: 1) a popular science text is a scientific text; 2) a popular science text is a textbook; 3) a popular science text is an instruction. The formation of these stereotypes in the minds of the general reader is due to the objective uncertainty of the genre and stylistic characteristics of a popular science text. The main function of the author’s preface is to make the proposed text as attractive as possible to the reader (advertising strategy). Within the framework of this strategy, the tactics of refuting the cognitive stereotype in the author’s preface are intended to show the reader that the proposed text does not belong to the texts of those genres whose functional and stylistic characteristics make them complex, boring, schematic for the mass addressee. As a result of the study, it was established that this tactic in relation to each of the specified stereotypes is implemented in different ways. The stereotype “a popular science text is a scientific text proper” can be refuted both explicitly (direct denial of the genre and stylistic features of a scientific text) and implicitly (indication of those properties of the text that distinguish it from a scientific text proper). The main methods of refuting the cognitive stereotype “a popular science text is a textbook” are both a direct refutation of the text’s belonging to this genre and an indication of the functional and substantive discrepancy between the proposed text and the textbook genre. The tactics of refuting the stereotype “a popular science text is an instruction” are implemented mainly implicitly: the author emphasizes those functional features of the text that do not allow it to be considered an instruction. The use of this tactic by the addresser is determined by the strategic goal of the preface genre to attract the reader’s attention to the proposed text.