SOCIAL NATURE AND SOCIALly IMPORTANT LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
Language is an important means of communication and bringing people together; language regulates their interpersonal and social interaction, coordinates their practice, participates in the formation of philosophical systems and national images of the world, ensures the accumulation and storage of information, classifies and consolidates concepts, forms human consciousness and self-consciousness. Speaking as a way to implement the potential language functions provides life of society and every individual. Language functions are defined and classified according to the language essence perspective. It is challenging to classify and discuss language functions, because it is difficult to identify similar functions mentioned in different studies and named differently as the grounds of these classifications are not always obvious. The aim of this study is to examine the major classifications of socially significant language functions and carry out a comparative analysis of classifications based on different principles and approaches in order to elicit generally accepted functions. The analysis of numerous studies shows that in the works on general linguistics and philosophy of language the unity of opinions on the following language functions is observed: the communicative function, the information or message function, the emotive function, the function of thought formation and phrasing. It should be noted that any of these classifications cannot be considered as complete and satisfactory. It is obvious that the different language functions are combined, intertwined and different variants, modifications and new significant language functions are generated.