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The ‘pragmatics of language’ is a set of pragmatic means of a particular language, the meanings of which not only change the world, but also themselves change in the framework of discourse. At the same time, ‘linguistic pragmatics’ is a branch of linguistics that examines linguistic units from the point of view of their use. The ‘pragmatic turn’ of the 1970s in lin­guistics meant an interest in using language as an action in which words acquire their ac­tual mea­nings, sometimes radically different from their non — contextual dictionary mea­nings. The study of the contribution that linguistic means of epistemic modality make to the mea­ning of discourse is a subject of epistemic pragmatics and has great applied potential. The article examines the lines of demarcation between linguistic semantics and pragmatics, as well as research directions in the field of epistemic pragmatics, including the use of epistemic modalities in the text. Strategies and tactics of manipulative influence on the audience play a crucial role in the presentation of epistemic warrants — guarantees that shape the epistemic credit history of communicants and may sometimes result in epistemic default. Some communicative techniques used in this process are analyzed: appeal to the guarantor of truth and reliability (authority), cognitive and communicative maneuvering, toggle words in media texts, etc.

This study focuses on the Routinicon database as a digital tool for describing routines — a distinct class of formulaic phraseological units that represent reactions to or comments on standard extralinguistic situations. For instance, the formula Kogo ya vizhu! (Whom do I see!) serves as a reaction to an unexpected meeting, while Kto tam? (Who’s there?) is a standard formulaic reaction to a knock at the door. The collection, classification and study of units of this kind is of undoubted interest both from the point of view of discourse theory and pragmatics, and from the point of view of the practice of mastering live spoken Russian by foreign speakers. Routinicon is a natural extension of the projects Russian Constructicon and Pragmaticon and borrows principles of data collection and data processing from the predecessor projects. At the same time, Routinicon collects phraseological units of a different type than these databases, and their description requires a fundamentally different annotation structure. The article discusses the principles and features of this annotation, as well as its potential for the intralingual classification of Russian language routines and its applicability to the corresponding material of other languages — laying the groundwork for future typological studies. Italian language examples collected by the authors are used for illustrations.

The article examines the concept of the rhetorical question, which — quite surprisingly — is still not part of the standard and widely recognized inventory of linguistic categories, and the term ‘rhetorical question’ is rarely used in linguistic studies. At the same time, the ex­pres­sion ‘rhetorical question’ is actively employed in discourse, and, at first glance, seems to be used in a rather broad and undefined sense. The goal of this article is to distinguish between the­se two fields: linguistics and everyday speech. On the one hand, the concept of a rhetorical question is given a clear definition, allowing the term to be introduced into the linguistic framework, and on the other hand, the actual usage of this expression in discourse is desc­ribed. It is shown that the general principle of using the word ‘rhetorical’ in discourse in relation to a question is that this question is ‘not genuine’ in some way, i. e. it is a question that is not being asked in order to get the answer. To characterize a question as rhetorical, two parameters are significant: “Why does this question not require an answer?” and “For what purpose is this statement being made, if not to get an answer?” By calling (his own or so­meo­ne else's) question ‘rhetorical’, the speaker indicates the implementation of one of the values of these parameters.

The paper views pragmatic meanings that have regular expression in language. Such meanings are 1) the illocutionary goal (illocutionary force) of an utterance, 2) the illocu­tio­nary function of a component of an utterance (theme and rheme of a statement, the known and the unknown of a question), 3) contrast and emphasis, and 4) the meaning of complete­ness/incompleteness of a speech act as a component of coherent discourse. It is shown that prosody is the main means of expressing pragmatic meanings in the languages of the world, and the expressed meanings are organized into a system that corresponds to the system of the prosodic means used. The study uses corpus and instrumental methods of analysis. The main material for analysis is the Russian language. The multimodal subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language was used as a corpus for the study. The primacy of prosody over segmental means of expressing the most important pragmatic meanings is demonstrated, in particular, using the material of the previously insufficiently studied speech act of an echo-question. An echo-question is statistically often a short speech act with minimal segmental material (“What?” “Eh?”). Consequently, the completeness and accuracy of the analysis for various types of echo-questions can only be achieved through the use of the corpus method, which allows obtaining a sufficient amount of data and representative material for analysis.

This study explores the organization of multimodal systems, mediated by two types of hierarchical regulations: systemic regulations governing each mode (speech and gesture) and multimodal regulations operationalizing mode alignment. To identify these regulations, we examine the variability of the multimodal speech-gesture system, modulated by the cognitive factor of vague reference in expository dialogue. The data were collected in an experiment involving native Russian speakers explaining the differences between close synonyms. The paper contrasts the distribution of vague reference speech cues used to shape referents in names (placeholders) and point the way to the referent in predications (approximators), both aligned with functional gestures (deictic, representational, and pragmatic).

The findings reveal several regulations that constrain the distribution and alignment of speech cues and gestures. First, the prevalence of approximators is observed, indicating that a higher input of predication expresses vague reference. Second, the prevalence of placeholders in the Request communicative move was found, accounting for the Request’s role in both initiating a new act and completing the previous one by renaming the vague referent. Third, a more frequent use of pragmatic gestures with approximators was identified, suggesting that while nominations primarily evoke iconic and indexical representations in gestures, predications are strongly linked with pragmatic manifestations. Finally, the study reveals that vague reference serves as a cognitive principle regulating the speech and gesture system in interactional discourse.

This article examines the underexplored concept of thymiologic modality, which refers to the characterization of an object based on the degree of its significance. This modality is ana­lyzed both as an independent entity and as a component of axiological modality, representing a higher or lower degree of relevance or significance. Thymiologic modality is explored through emotional reactions to perceived information. Surprise and indifference are considered emo­tions that exhibit independent thymiologic modality. Axiological modality is imposed on these emotions, modifying them into admiration and disappointment. The study is based on the analysis of dialogic contexts collected from the Russian National Corpus (RNC). In the exa­mined contexts, the speaker's emotional reaction is conveyed through specific markers of emo­tional expression, such as emotional interjections and communicatives — linguistic units re­gularly used in dialogue.

The discursive approach to the study of politeness has expanded its scope by incorpo­ra­ting the hearer, in addition to the speaker, as well as the context of interaction, which de­ter­mines various aspects of communication, including the emotional/emotive dimension. This ar­ticle examines politeness through the prism of the emotional component of communication. It contributes to the study of emotive politeness, which focuses on the recipient's feelings, in face-threatening acts. The purpose of this study is to identify the means of mitigating refusal through emotional support to the addressee in English and Russian academic digital com­mu­nication and to trace their culture-specific variability. The material consists of authentic Rus­sian and English emails that contain a refusal to a request to write a review of an article and a re­fusal to an invitation to contribute to a special issue of a journal. The study focuses on the struc­ture of refusal, the ways it is performed, supporting moves that aim to mi­tigate its threat, as well as combinations of these and their conventional features. Cont­rastive ana­lysis draws on the main provisions of emotive lingua-ecology, cross-cultural pragmatics, the theory of (im)politeness and communicative ethnostyles. Taking into account the fact that each e-mail may have its own features, predetermined by the author’s idiostyle and psy­cho­logical characteristics, as well as the context of the exchange, we have identified some culture-specific features. The findings suggest that English emails are more focused on mitigating refusal and its negative effect on the addressee’s feelings, thereby saving face, compared with the Russian ones. This can be observed in the structure of refusal, its supporting moves and po­li­teness strategies. The results confirm that politeness is not only a social, but also a psychological phe­nomenon based on empathy and tact. Emotive politeness, its manifestations and relevance may vary across cultures and are shaped by the values shared by its repre­sentatives.

The article provides a functional interpretation of explanation. It is based on the principles of Linguistic Pragmatics and Functional Linguistics. Explanation is analysed from two perspectives: as a communicative act and as a two-part discursive structure. The com­mu­nicative act of explanation is characterised by a perlocutionary goal of making the reader un­derstand the properties of an entity. This understanding focuses on the properties that are un­clear or not obvious to the reader. The perlocutionary goal defines the key feature of the ex­pla­nation act, which uses diverse verbal tools to clarify the properties of an entity. The article pro­poses a performative model of the explanation act, which outlines the mechanism of constructing an explanation and the pragmatic conditions for its success. Taking these conditions into account, the discursive structure of explanation is examined, focusing on the principles of information unfolding and the content parameters of its components.

The article is devoted to the questions "Who am I? What am I?", which have been actively spreading in the Russian language since the end of the 18th — beginning of the 19th century, both in poetry and prose. As a linguistic means of self-presentation and self-iden­tification, questions are used in situations that encourage a person to reflect on their place in so­ciety and their own rank feelings. The very fact of using the rhetorical questions "Who am I? What am I?" excludes a neutral attitude of the individual to the situation that has become the reason for understanding their "I". Being a tool of self-knowledge, the analyzed questions are an indicator of a person's fixation on their own social and personal identity and reflect chan­ges in psychology against the background of socio-economic processes that transform tradi­tio­nal forms of interaction in society. Based on the data of the National Russian Corpus, it is shown that changes in the perception of the “I” in the 19th—20th centuries, described in phi­losophy, led to the emergence of rhetorical questions “Who am I? What am I?” in the lan­guage. This construction is distributed synchronously with the I-constructions I am I, I am not I, I am good, I am bad, etc.

‘Second-person narrative’ is defined by Richardson as one of the most significant narrative forms since the introduction of the stream of consciousness. And not by chance: it not only changes the reader's interaction with the narrative world, but also imposes its own re­quirements on contemporary narratology, it demands new language and a new way to describe it. ‘Second-person narrative’ problematizes the boundaries between narrator and nar­ra­tee, actual and virtual, subject and object. More than that: ‘second-person narrative’ tries to point out the changes that are taking place with contemporary narratives in a new digital context. ‘Second-person narrative’ therefore attracts the attention of researchers from diverse branches of postclassical narratology: natural and unnatural, transmedia, exploring interac­tive and digital narratives. ‘Second-person narrative becomes a transitional form between tra­ditional narratives (telling about events that have already happened) and "future narratives". In this article, ‘second-person narrative’ is researched using the example of Paul Auster's no­vel "Invisible" (2010). In its functioning, we study both the properties and functions pre­viously noted by researchers (on other, earlier literary works), and new ones are highlighted: ‘Second-person narrative’ contributes to a more active immersion of the reader into the nar­rative world, creates immersion, shifts the focus to the reader as being "responsible" for choosing and evaluating what is happening. But it also distances him, instilling uncertainty in his own status, in the reality of the events taking place, in his own agency. Auster's ‘se­cond-person narrative’ finally shows how traditional narratives are undergoing transfor­mation under the influence of a digital (interactive) environment and how such a narrative form is able, if not to redefine the narrative and its basic concepts, then to point out the need for such a redefinition.

This study is driven by the growing importance of political rhetoric in international relations, where the linguistic tools employed by the speaker serve as instruments for strategically managing the perception of the audience. It also addresses the interplay between language and politics under conditions of global international tensions. The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the verbalization of communicative strategies within the foreign policy discourse of the President of the Russian Federation, using textual addresses to the international audience as a case study. The study focuses on a comparative analysis of dynamic changes in foreign policy discourse, the mechanisms and means of implementing cooperative and confrontational strategies through communicative tactics within a rigid genre framework, and the pragmatic-semantic role of these strategies in achieving extralinguistic objectives. The novelty of this study lies in its comprehensive approach to analyzing the President’s foreign policy addresses, integrating linguistic, pragmatic, and genre-discursive aspects. For the first time, a detailed comparison of cooperative and confrontational strategies is conducted through the lens of their linguistic realization in the context of temporal dynamics. It has been determined that the genre structure and linguistic implementation of the President's foreign policy addresses adapt to shifts in the geopolitical context, ensuring the flexibility of foreign policy discourse. The cooperative strategy employed focuses on strengthening Russia's positive image by emphasizing historical ties, shared values, and pros­pects for partnership, whereas the confrontational strategy utilizes specific tactics to inf­luence imp­licit audiences. The multi-level approach to audience segmentation enables the President's fo­reign policy discourse to effectively combine strategic perception management of explicit audiences with addressing implicit political objectives.

This article explores film synopses that are treated as advertising texts characterized by semantic density and succinctness. They contain purposeful omission aimed to intrigue recipients and stimulate them to watch the film. The research is set in the framework of linguapragmatics and its goal is to reveal the ways intentional omissions work in film synopses. This research is novel as film advertisements have not been viewed through the lens of the means aimed at creating omission of information and their effect on the text pragmatics. The sample includes 100 film synopses for Russian films spanning 2010—2023. The analysis of the elements of their semantic structure shows that in film synopses, semantic incomp­le­teness takes the shape of semantic gaps and implicatures. Importantly, it affects any element, inc­luding the inciting incident, personages and spatial and temporal settings. The findings re­veal that the intentional omission is predominantly implicit and the employment of inference cannot fill all semantic gaps, thus intrigue is preserved. However, in some film synopses intrigue is expressed explicitly. Our findings show the range of linguistic markers signaling the intentional omission of information in sample texts. This research paves the way for further investigations into how intrigue is created in promotional film texts, such as pos­ters and trailers. It may also be valuable for studies in commercial advertising.