This paper attempts to define a culture-specific communicative style which I call communicative ethno-style and determine the factors which lead to its formation. While defining communicative ethno-style some generalizations are unavoidable and reference is made to a typical user of standard language and his/her communicative behaviour in interpersonal interaction in everyday situations. At the same time it is not possible to take a dichotomous approach in describing the communicative styles as they form a continuum and need to be viewed in comparison. In this paper I demarcate the dominant features of Russian communicative style as opposed to British and emphasize the importance of a systemized description of culture specific communicative differences through communicative ethno-styles. This is important for developing pragmatic and discourse competence necessary for intercultural communication. The study is based on empirical data obtained through questionnaires, interviews and observations and follows contextual, pragmatic, discourse analyses. The theoretical framework is based on Politeness Theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Leech, 1983, 2005; Watts, 2003), Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and the Theory of Cultural Scripts (Wierzbicka, 1991/2003, 2002, 2006).
This introduction to the Special Issue summarises Anna Wierzbicka's contribution to the linguistic study of meaning. It presents the foundations of the approach known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) developed by Wierzbicka. The current state of the approach is discussed in the article with the ideas of 65 semantic primitives, universal grammar and the principle of reductive paraphrase in semantic explications. It traces the origin of Wierzbicka's ideas to Leibniz. The framework has been tested on about thirty languages of diverse origin. The applications of the approach are broad and encompass lexical areas of emotions, social categories, speech act verbs, mental states, artefacts and animals, verbs of motion, kinship terms (among others), as well as grammatical constructions.
The introductory article to the special issue dedicated to Igor Mel’čuk summarizes the main tenets of his “Meaning ⇔ Text” theory, and outlines its contribution to the development of diverse areas of modern linguistics. This theory can be characterized as a formalized, semantically oriented, multilevel, structural, functional and global model of language which explains the way the speaker generates the meaning embodied in the text. Both the article and the volume as a whole show the relevance of this theory for the development of semantics, grammar, pragmatics, typology and lexicography and highlight its theoretical and practical implications for linguistic studies and interdisciplinary research. We then briefly present the articles in this issue. Some of them were written directly in line with the “Meaning ⇔ Text theory” and were influenced by Mel’čuk’s ideas; others were the result of the stimulus that this theory, like its author, gave to the comprehension of the complex issues arising from the description of various levels of the language system. But all of them are related to Igor Mel’čuk, both as a linguist and a personality, and they are dedicated to him.
This special issue continues the discussion of the impact of culture on identity, communication, politeness, and discourse strategies (see Russian Journal of Linguistics 22 (4) 2018, 23 (4) 2019, 24 (2) 2020). The topic has become particularly relevant in the context of two multidirectional processes, i.e., globalization resulting from current geopolitical trends and technological advancements, which have encouraged the intensification of contacts between people, languages, and cultures; and deglobalization focused on the preservation of national cultures and development of a multipolar and multicultural world. In our introductory article, we attempt to trace the impact of communication technologies, language, and culture contacts on digital, face-to-face, and public communication in different settings and discourses and outline its influence on communication, language variation, and change. In this introductory article we present a summary of the contributions of our authors to the issue, which showed that the implications of globalization and language contact are multifaceted, they can have both positive and negative effects on language use, maintenance, and change, as well as on cultural identity and diversity. Pursuing these latter factors contributes to developing trends of deglobalization. Our authors invite the reader to reflect on these processes. In conclusion, we sum up their major findings and suggest a brief avenue for further research.
The issues of physiological and mental health of young people have always remained in the focus of researchers’ attention, however, there are practically no works where the “healthy personality” is considered more broadly, including the features of its functioning in a social context. The authors propose the concept of a “healthy personality”, which includes the following components: emotional stability and psychological well-being, a low degree of suggestibility and adherence to the values of goodness and security. These components meet the challenges of the modern world and underlie the ability of a student’s personality to withstand the challenges of extremism. A combination of techniques was used to create the concept: 1) “General Health Questionnaire” by Goldberg, 2) Schwartz Questionnaire and 3) “Suggestibility Test” by S.V. Klauchek and V.V. Delaryu. With the help of tools that include these methods and thematic blocks (attitudes towards the media, extremism, civic and political position), a questionnaire survey was conducted on a sample of 1,500 people representing the Russian students of three Moscow universities – RUDN University, Moscow State University and National Research University Higher School of Economics in terms of courses and areas of study.The purpose of the article is to develop a research concept of “healthy personality” based on a combination of existing methods used to measure conformity, psychological stability and emotional well-being and value orientations. As a result, the level of emotional stability and psychological wellbeing of Moscow students, the type of value orientations, and their level of conformity are revealed. The dominant personality type, calculated on the basis of the results of the methods, turned out to be “relatively healthy personality” (67.6%), one fifth of the respondents were classified as “healthy personality”, however, every tenth student is a “personality at risk”. The proposed concept can be used during sociological monitoring of educational services of the university in order to diagnose risk groups among first-year students.
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