The article discusses official or business correspondence which unlike a number of other subsystems of the official style represents the actual material for a special research in the aspect of direct and indirect speech acts. The article is motivated by two interconnected empirical and theoretical conditions. The noted gnoseological circumstance forms the basis for a problem definition that implies characterization of representation of the indirect character of speech acts in the business correspondence. The basic empirical material comprises the business document flow of higher education institutions of the South of Russia connected with the coordination of several international scientific and educational projects in 2009-2015.