Indirect Communication in the Russian Speech Culture

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Abstract

The national specificity of the Russian indirect communication is analyzed according to Anna Wierzbicka’s linguocultural model in which the specific characteristics of language and speech are interpreted through cultural scenarios. Wierzbicka’s model was partially modified for the purposes of this study. Firstly, we suggest to use the opposition of personality ~ impersonality. Secondly, unlike A.Wierzbicka, we consider it appropriate to use the concept of indirect communication, defining it as a communicative-interpretive phenomenon (through additional interpretative efforts of the addressee of speech). Indirectness itself is defined as one of the types of indirect communication: the planned indirect communication. We analyze in detail the reasons for it to be a part of Russian communicative style (primarily indirect directive speech acts and manipulation), associating these reasons with the cultural scenarios and the opposition of personality ~ impersonality. From this point of view, a number of actual processes in modern Russian speech are discussed, such as planned indirect communication and its: a different understanding of indirect communication as a means of increasing the politeness of statements by different generations, as well as the undesirability of excessive politeness in some situations and appeal to indirect communication in order to avoid it.

About the authors

Vadim V Dementyev

Saratov State University

Email: dementevvv@yandex.ru
Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Language Theory and History, and Applied Linguistics, Saratov State University Astrakhanskaya, 83, Saratov, 410012

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