2024 Vol. 15 №4

The role of verbal aggression in the promotion of specific value-regulatory systems, par­ticularly those of a religious nature, has not been extensively explored in contemporary schol­arship. This study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which verbal aggression is produced and employed as a means of preserving and advancing the Rodnoverie ideology within the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. To achieve this, a comprehensive methodology is employed, incorporating both functional-semantic and pragma-semantic approaches. The study identifies the motives and conditions under which verbal aggression tends to arise in online discourse. Key speech acts that manifest this aggression—such as insults, rude de­mands, reproach, accusations, mockery, negative evaluations, and ill-wi­shing—are analysed, with hypotheses offered regarding their function and frequency. Furthermore, the study elucidates the composition and nature of the primary goals behind the aggressive speech behaviour of Rodnoverie adherents.

The study aims to reveal politeness strategies used in natural interaction within a particular community group. The article analyses excerpts from audio recordings of conversations of teenage male friends. The chosen interactional approach relies on Goffman’s notion of face and Brown and Levinson’s model of linguistic politeness, ethnographic methods of collecting data, and conversation analysis. The case study continues the discussion of gender and age aspects of politeness realization and communication styles. The article reveals the following interactional solidarity strategies: teasing and group jokes, where participants add details to exaggerate the comic effect; ritual insults, in particular making up nicknames; synchronized speech pacing, even leading to creating spontaneous poetry. In the case of a request, the following politeness strategies and means are noted: repetition of words, both literal and with variations; increasing the volume and varying the speech rate, which express the common emotional state; decreasing the imposition with lexical means, markers of in-group identity; friend’s supporting through an offer and a jokily threat, language game (rhyming and deliberate mispronouncing), politeness marker "please" and its slang equivalent “pazhe”, minimizing the degree of a favour; using markers of group identity (“brother”), offering help and threating jokingly, using puns (rhyme and deliberate change of the phonetic form of a word), and increasing volume and prosodic emphasis that express an emotional state. Participants experiment with communicative strategies, sometimes pushing the degree of their expression to the edge and turning it into a performance. Applying the solidarity strategies in a more expressive and playful way seems to be a feature of the adolescent communication style. The data analysed reveals the local, cultural (and supposedly age) specifics of employing the universal face-saving mechanism of the communication.

The paper explores the evolution of communication etiquette between humans and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing particularly on the adaptation of traditional politeness strategies. While the politeness of AI can enhance the human level of trust, human politeness towards AI is equally important as it can impact the efficiency of communication. To demonstrate this, I conducted a pilot experiment with ChatGPT 4.0, using polite and non-polite prompts in Russian. The results suggest that politeness is likely to positively impact the accuracy of responses. Furthermore, the paper examines changes in speech etiquette, highlighting how interactions with AI often omit traditional greetings and farewells, reflecting a more functional approach to communication. Although the paper does not provide definitive answers on how politeness strategies between humans and AI should function, it underscores sociolinguistic points that are likely to become increasingly pressing over time. Overall, the paper illustrates a significant shift in communication practices, driven by the integration of AI into daily interactions, necessitating a reevaluation of the established social norms and speech etiquette.

The article presents the findings of a study on the attitudes toward profanity among Muscovites born between 1962 and 2011, all from families with higher education backgrounds. The research explores how respondents understand the term ‘mat,’ their views on societal restrictions regarding profanity, self-assessed frequency of using profanities and purposes for it, as well as the evolution of the attitudes toward profanity over different life stages. The study is based on the analysis of 20 interviews and 182 questionnaire responses. It also offers a concise overview of scholarly and lexicographical interpretations of the term ‘mat’. The author proposes her own definition of profanity, distinguishing it from other forms of obscene language. Preliminary statistical insights are presented. For example, 26 % of the respondents report rarely or never using ‘mat’ (excluding quotations), with 23 respondents claiming they have never used it. 14 % of the respondents identify themselves as frequent users, while 60 % admit to using it occasionally or only in specific social settings. Many respondents believe that profanity is used to some extent by everyone. However, a significant portion express discomfort when it is used simply to fill pauses in conversation. 35 % of the respondents admit to using obscene language in the presence of children, while 10 % more people are likely to limit its use with strangers compared to close friends or acquaintances. Opinions on profanity regulation vary, with 14 % supporting a strict ban, 44 % supporting a ban in specific situations, and 17 % advocating complete freedom to use profanities. In conclusion, the author offers a model for the perception of profanity: its infrequent, primarily oral speech use, restricted to private settings or among close acquaintances of either gender, but generally avoided in the presence of children. Profanity is used indirectly, not in an invective manner, and serves two main functions: psychological release and as a form of expressive or entertaining speech.

The present study addresses the interdisciplinary issue of conflict and its linguistic specificity as a component of the emotive dimension in artistic discourse, with a focus on the novel “Qin Qiang” by Jia Pingwa (2005). The aim is to analyse the aspects of speech and language conflict, as well as its destructive forms, within the lexico-semantic, syntactic, and functional-stylistic units of the language. A conflictual communicative act is viewed as the result of specific failures in speech interaction and the violation of conventions and rules governing discursive behaviour. Linguistic contradictions and conflicts are analysed within the framework of emotiology, at the level of emotivity and the emotive field in the pragmatic space of artistic discourse, as a multimodal phenomenon shaped by systemic relations of emotionalism. Discursive contradictions function as key elements of the structural tension in the text, serving as linguistic and semantic dominants or attractors. These contradictions materialize as stylistic units at various levels and can be employed as a tool to create the desired effect in artistic narrative. Linguistically, conflict arises from violations of pragmatic-semantic and stylistic-syntactic conventional norms. Drawing on empirical material, the study demonstrates that the use of conflictogenic discourse in prose is a distinctive feature of Jia Pingwa’s idiosyncrasy, integrating various communicative strategies. The findings provide a foundation for further research into speech collisions in Chinese fiction.