Paragrafické prostředky komunikace v encyklopedickém textu

The study proceeds from the formerly acknowledged assumption that various types of non-verbal (paragraphic) means are used for comprehension of verbal text. Many scientists (e.g. Refomatskij, Gorelov, Volkov, Kostygynová, Plotnikov etc.) paid attention to description of these sign units. Their conceptions appear to be diverse, nevertheless we can trace certain unifying semiotic standpoints among them. In this work we focus above all on use of paragraphic means in technical texts. Their use is dependent on objectives, which should be fulfilled within the text (e.g. photograph has due to its iconicity primarily documentary character) but also on type of technical text. Our attention is driven mainly to encyclopaedic texts. Encyclopaedic texts include also broad scale of texts with different topics, recipients, level of specialty, therefore for the analysis we chose only three representatives (one strictly technical cultural encyclopaedic text, focused on Belorussian literature, and two didactic encyclopaedic texts, the first also focused on literature, the second focused on physics). As the results of our research show, in the analysed texts apart from photographs we can find also other paragraphemes, their presence and frequency depends on the type of the text. Their use emerges also from the length and topic of the entry. Number of occurrences of paragraphemes of certain type in different texts are further compared and presented in tables.