The paper deals with reputation and face treated as emotional and rational evaluation and self-evaluation of a person correlating with their respect and self-respect. The most important features of respect/disrespect reflect its deontic character and focus on the correlation of respect/disrespect and affection/disaffection. The emotional component of this attitude is its basis, whereas the rational component is its addition. The feeling of self-respect is actualized if it may be threatened. The descriptions of reputation usually contain expressed or inferred motivation for such attitude. Reputation may be a masque meant to hide real motives of behavior. The correlation between respect/disrespect and reputation may be presented as an opposition of process Vs result and content Vs form when we describe the attitude to a person, or group, or organization. Reputation is connected with external signs – someone’s good or bad name. A speech act description of reputation and face includes the contradistinction of sincere and formal behavior in a situation of a threat to respect and selfrespect of a person. Conceptualization of face is predominantly determined by the norms of certain communities in a certain epoch.
The article deals with the problem of personality creativity within the framework of the dichotomy “language VS communication”, which is built into the triad “language – creativity – cognition”. This triad is analyzed in two dimensions: from the point of view of the creativity of the language system; from the point of view of the creativity of a linguistic personality. Models and cognitive mechanisms of creativity are presented. Along with analogy and inference, there are three types of the main mechanism of creativity – deviations: pragmatic (distortion of the sign-user relationship); semantic (distortion of the sign-referent relationship); conceptual (distortion of the relationship between the conceptual structures of the original and new values). Pragmatic deviation plays a special role in the process of creative development of new meanings. The question of the boundaries of deviation and what imposes restrictions on the development of new creative meanings is considered. We prove that the limitations on the development of new creative meanings of the word are imposed by the conceptual structure of the original meaning of the word. Based on the latest achievements of Russian and foreign cognitive science, we analyze the structure of the mental lexicon as the main component that plays a leading role in creativity. The connection between creativity and the threat of manipulation is indicated. It is proved that linguistic creativity can lead to the creation of ambiguity (obscurity), which can lead to manipulation. The prospects for further research in the field of creativity are determined, namely, a cross-cultural approach to this phenomenon.
The article is devoted to the pragmatic properties of proverbs in dialogue. Proverbs, or axiomatic folk assessments of people’s experience, are used in dialogues predominately as argumentative support to this or that speech act of a speaker. The proverbs meaning adjusts to temporal and agent characteristics of speech act to make it more convincing when using a proverb as an argument. Sometimes proverbs can be used as indirect speech acts, combining both functions of speech act and its argument. The analysis of typical usages of proverbs makes it possible to reveal their pragmatics and thereby supplement the interpretations of proverbs in order to enhance their use in speech both by foreigners studying the Russian language and by new generations of native speakers of the Russian language. The statements put forward in the article are illustrated with six proverbs actively used in the modern Russian language pragmatic description: za odnogo bitogo dvuh nebityh dayut, kiln klinom vyshibayut, vyshe golovy ne prygnesh’, posle draki kulakami ne mashut, nazvalsya gruzdem, polezaj v kuzov, s volkami zhit’, po-volch’i vyt’.
The paper focuses on the semantic role of Other in academic discourse. Drawing on ideas expressed by M.M. Bakhtin and Yu.M. Lotman, the authors see Other as a key actor of written communication in the academic community and aim to describe the specifics of verbalizing Other’s presence in academic discourse as compared to fiction genres. The empirical basis of the study is constituted by a corpus of research papers written by Russian linguists and published over the period of 1991 through 2012 as part of the Logical Analysis of Language series edited by N.D. Arutyunova. In the initial stage of the research the corpus was used as a source of language data featuring contexts indicative of omnipresent Other. The second stage consisted in semantic analysis of language samples followed by cognitive interpretation and relied both on present-day linguistic theories and recent research in psychology. Results include a typology of Other in academic discourse and a description of relevant lexical and syntactic units systemically functioning as explicit and implicit markers of Other in Russian written academic communication. Addressing the figure of Other in academic discourse offers insights on the cognitive background of academic communication and brings to light key pragmatic intentions shaping interaction within the academic community.
During the pandemic, the mask became a necessary attribute. The article discusses the eye gestures, by which you can guess the smile under the mask. According to student surveys, a smile can be recognized by squinting eyes. However, squinted eyes can be part of the gestures of a smile or a grin, which have different meanings. This uncertainty appears in a Russian proverb that characterizes the typical behavior of relatives towards a son-in-law, in which the gesture of the brother-in-law’s eyes remains incomprehensible: The son-in-law likes to take, the father-in-law loves honor, and the brother-in-law squints his eyes. The mimic gesture of SQUINTING EYES can be considered in its linguistic correlates: shchurit’ glaza, prishchurit’sja, s prishchurom, etc. Lexicographic and corpus analysis of these units makes it possible to identify, in addition to the meaning of physical action, emotional and evaluative meanings not noted in modern dictionaries. Based on this analysis and taking into account folklore materials, an interpretation of the brother-in-law’s behavior in the Russian proverb was proposed.
Russian units describing the gesture have different versions of English translations, thus we can suggest their cultural and linguistic specifics, possibly reflecting a gesture characteristic of Russian communicative behavior.
The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the intertextual level in the model of a linguistic personality as a native speaker of dialogical language ability. The authors proceed from the understanding that the model of a linguistic personality includes the following levels: the level of superficial understanding of a speech work and its selection for the creation of a response text, interpretative, modus and intertextual levels. The intertextual level is considered as the level of generation of a speech product created in a response situation. Intertextuality in this case is interpreted as a dialogical interaction of texts with each other, as evidenced by the presence of various “alien” elements in the created speech work. The units of description of this level are intertexts taken from the original speech utterance or from any other texts. The factual material is the responses of one native speaker published on the portal of the Bankfax news agency. Reconstruction of the intertextual level in the structure of the linguistic personality as a carrier of dialogic language ability shows that absolutely all the response speech works created by one native speaker contain “echoes and echoes” (according to M.M. Bakhtin) of “foreign” texts. In this study, these are words corresponding to certain genres, proverbs and sayings, stable expressions from various spheres of speech interaction.
The subject of the article is the linguistic means of reflecting in a scientific text the personality of its author in terms of, firstly, the communicative intentions of the author, and secondly, the perception of the recipient of this text. The article also considers the degree of objectivity in the construction of a scientific text. It is shown that the image of the author of a scientific text, revealed in terms of the communicative intentions of the sender of the text, and the image of the author, perceived by its recipient, may not coincide. As a theoretical basis of the study, the observations of M.Yu. Fedosyuk about different types of implicit information were used. On the basis of so-called “subtext” implicit information, i.e. information, the transmission of which was a part of the hidden communicative intentions of the sender of the text, the so-called “intentional” image of the author can be deduced. On the basis of so-called “non-text” implicit information, i.e. information, the transmission of which was not included in the communicative intentions of the sender of the text, the “perceptual” image of the author can be deduced. In addition, as a basis for determining the degree of objectivity of the construction of the text the typology of the observer’s points of view, developed by B.A. Uspensky, was used. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the coincidence of the intentional and perceptual images of the author testifies to the objectivity of the construction of the text, the discrepancy – to its subjectivity.
This paper presents the first part of research on the particularities of Ty-/Vy you/polite You, both 2nd person singular in the Russian and Italian languages. Far from the ambition of presenting the definitive account of the subject matter, the author identifies the main issues related to the investigation of these lexico-grammatical forms functioning in speech. Thus, such investigation of this matter implies researcher’s focus on: (1) particularities of Ty-/ Vy-functioning as the means of speech etiquette, specifically, in the functions of addressing, as well as in the concrete speech acts, in which the choice of the pronoun determines the grammatical realization of the statement (for instance, a request), (2) contextual meanings of these forms in cases when they serve as the means of an expressive function and the description of their peculiarities of their use in Russian in rigid phraseological units. At present, a contrastive analysis of concrete speech acts appears promising (and productive) method of interpretation of the national speech etiquette specifics. The paper presents the results of the study on the peculiarities of the use of the Ty-/Vy-forms as the means of speech etiquette in concrete situations of verbal communication. Comparative (contrastive) analysis of Russian and Italian allows to demonstrate the specifics of these two forms in either of the studied linguistic cultures. An additional focus of this paper is the investigation of the recent trends in the use of these forms in contemporary Italian. The study revealed the similarities and differences in Russian and Italian communicative behavior. The findings of the study can be applied in the context of teaching the etiquette of crosscultural communication and Russian-Italian translation.
The anthropocentric approach assumes the idea of an absolute observer in relation to a person, in particular, his or her face, which, along with others, has a sign of color. It is the complexion that can serve as the basis for the nickname of a person. The results of the discourse analysis of the materials of the National Corpus of the Russian language for the period of 1772–2016 allow us to distinguish three positions of observation of face color, in which it is perceived as an object 1) exotic, 2) diagnostic and 3) aesthetic. The possibilities of combining these positions are noted. A color thesaurus of adjectives denoting complexion (more than 70 units) and naming primary colors and their shades, as well as complex colors, has been compiled. Changes in complexion can be more or less prolonged, natural or artificial, caused by external conditions or the inner state of a person. The relationship between complexion and emotional state, conceptualized in language and recorded in fiction, has been confirmed by modern experimental studies in the field of biology and medicine. In conclusion, the sociocultural reasons for the transformation of the positions of the observer of the complexion have been revealed: the processes of globalization and the principle of political correctness cause the reduction of the exotic look; commercialization and the development of the “beauty industry” actualize the aesthetic, although the aesthetic ideal changes, while the intersection of the positions of the doctor and the artist continues.
The article is devoted to the problems of correlation between models of etiquette behavior in Iranian and Russian communicative cultures. We focus on the attention in the article is paid to taarof – the system of etiquette behavior in Persian culture. Taarof plays a fundamentally important role in the life of modern Iranian society and in the communicative interaction of Iranians with foreigners. The article deals with the main postulates of the theory of politeness and the problems of national specifics of speech etiquette in Persian culture. The crucial point for Persian culture is the concept of ceremony, ritualized behavior in everyday communication. Ritualized communication also existed in the patriarchal Russian society, however, modern Russian everyday etiquette has largely lost the features of ceremonial and has become less formal. In the article, we analyze real everyday conversations of Persian culture. We list important characteristics of the ceremonial nature of everyday communication in Iran. There are two situations of an unexpected meeting and a related invitation to visit to be considered. What we are interested in is the stereotypical invitation and refusal formulas, which are idiomatic and figurative. We plan to describe the pragmatic nature of the etiquette formulas of Taarof and to compile the Russian-Iranian dictionary of speech etiquette in future.
