Abstract
The article considers the features of the communicative-cognitive approach to the subject area of discourse and its interpretation in linguistics. The authors give several views on the concept of discourse, its main characteristics and emphasize the interactivity of its nature. Overall, the interpretation of discourse as a multifaceted communicative-cognitive system was viewed through a complex of three aspects: the translation of beliefs and ideas that is cognitive, the interaction of communication participants in specific conditions and contexts that are communicative. The article presents the structure of discourse from the perspective of communicative-cognitive approach, analyzes all the elements of the structure. The position on the speech act is viewed as a minimal discursive unit and the possibility of its use for linguistic descriptions is separately considered. The principle of unfolding a speech act in accordance with a specific cognitive scenario with regard to the communicative characteristics of the act is highlighted.