Abstract
The treatise focuses on mutual comparison of three methods of detection of prominent text units (prominent in relation to the contents of the text). The methods are: 1) analysis of key words based on comparison of source and referential corpora, 2) thematic concentration and h-point, and 3) the TF*IDF method. We try to thematize their pros and cons and, using the results of the carried out analyses, propose the optimal method for the extraction of thematic words from the spoken texts the frequency structure of which differs distinctly from the frequency structure of written texts.