Vol 30, No 1 (2026): LANGUAGE, CULTURE, COGNITION AND COMMUNICATION

This special issue is devoted to the study of correlation between language, culture, cognition and communication. This topic was widely discussed at the VII International Firsova’s Readings at the RUDN University on October 23-25, 2025. The issue presents articles by conference participants, covering a wide range of topics. They demonstrate that in the modern, anthropocentric stage of linguistics, an interdisciplinary research paradigm is dominant. It enables scholars to transcend their disciplines, integrate research methods, share knowledge from different subject areas, and open up new research opportunities and perspectives. The focus of this kind of research is not the language system itself, but the individual who speaks the language, along with their emotions, feelings, relationships, and the worldview. The development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence provides a powerful impetus for interdisciplinary linguistic research. They offer researchers new opportunities but also raise important questions that require solutions. This introductory article outlines the paradigms of contemporary linguistic research and provides a brief overview of the articles presented in this issue.

In this article, I argue in favor of strengthening the relationship between Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Social Cognition in order to answer the following question: how could we extend the understanding of how linguistic choices are affected or complemented cognitively? I thus attempt to integrate the views introduced by SFL and Social Cognition by recognizing that the categories from the former, added to the principles of the latter, may lead researchers in linguistics - both theoretical and applied - to a broader field of comprehension which may have some impact on all ways of apprehending the social element. The study draws on categories proposed by SFL as well as the propositions of Social Cognition. I assume, therefore, that there are social, cultural, and cognitive reasons that, if integrated, impact discourse semantics in a manner that contributes positively to an effective communication. That is why a few elements from sociology - egological perspective, dialectic perspective of social reality, sociocultural memory - are used to explain aspects of the social construction of reality and to support the discussions undertaken, in addition to providing some input to answer the following questions: (1) what is the relationship between SFL and Social Cognition, and (2) what does this relationship imply for our analyses? These reflections point to the role of language in the construction of possible worlds on levels that permeate the situational and cultural contexts and indicate that social cognition is a condition for understanding the interrelationship between lexicogrammar and discourse semantics.

The article discusses the status of varieties of a pluricentric language, such as Russian English, Chinese English, among others. Some linguists waive this status because the language system of these varieties is not based on their own norms but is grounded on the norms of other varieties, either British or American. However, speakers of these varieties use them as lingua francas for communication and their Englishes are easily recognized as non-British or non-American, i.e., their varieties serve for linguacultural identification of the users. This is due to the fact that each variety is underpinned by the users’ culture and mindset and reflects traces of the users’ native languages, which allows us to make a conclusion that local varieties are not bound to the “political map” of the region (one of the critical arguments against world Englishes) but they are associated with their ethnic cultures. The article is an analytical review of the debatable issues of the World Englishes paradigm, English as a Lingua Franca theory, and English as an International Language concept. It aims to reveal factors that make it possible to recognize Expanding Circle varieties, to state the major features and functions of Russian English. The author focuses on some practical textbooks aimed at teaching world Englishes and their cultures. The method of corpus analysis of Russian English was used. Quantitative and comparative analysis of research articles in the leading sociolinguistic journals ( World Englishes and English Today ) was conducted to reveal the overwhelming predominance of Chinese English research as compared with that of Russian English. The author concludes that world Englishes of the Expanding Circle are legitimate varieties that have variable exonorms. Certain trends for their endonorms to start forming are revealed.

Artificial intelligence systems increasingly participate in domains once considered distinctly human, including affective exchange, creativity and interpersonal communication. Yet there is limited linguistic research on how users discursively construct authenticity and creativity in their interactions with AI companions. This study addresses this gap by examining how users ascribe or deny agency, emotion and sincerity to AI partners, and how these constructions differ across cultural contexts. The aim of the study is to identify the linguistic resources through which authenticity emerges as a relational effect rather than an intrinsic property of either human or machine. The material consists of two culturally distinct corpora: a set of qualitative diaries produced in English by Japanese university students during a four-week interaction with AI companions, and user testimonies posted on the Reddit forum r/Replika. The methodological approach combines systemic functional linguistics with critical discourse analysis and insights from 4E cognition. The analysis focuses on transitivity, modality and appraisal, examining how grammatical choices construe agency, realis or irrealis status and evaluative stance. The main findings show that students generally maintain analytical distance, framing AI behaviour through modality and judgement that limit authenticity to fleeting moments. By contrast, Reddit users frequently construe the AI as a relational partner, endowing it with emotional depth and creativity, especially in moments of vulnerability. Across both corpora, personhood is linguistically enacted through users’ depiction of the AI as Senser, Sayer or Actor. These results imply that synthetic personhood is not a future possibility but an ongoing discursive accomplishment, raising wider questions about authenticity, attachment and the cultural shaping of human-AI relationships.

While extensive research exists on cognitive metaphors of happiness in Western, Middle Eastern, and East Asian languages, South Asian languages remain largely underexplored. This gap limits our understanding of how diverse cultural and philosophical traditions shape emotional conceptualization in non-Western contexts. Addressing this research problem, the study explores how Hindi and Bangla speakers conceptualize happiness through metaphorical patterns rooted in their linguistic and cultural frameworks. This study investigates similarities and differences in the conceptualization of happiness in Hindi and Bangla, identifying the socio-cultural, religious, and philosophical factors shaping emotional meaning. The dataset consists of 100 idiomatic and proverbial expressions (50 from each language) collected from digital and print sources and analysed using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Kövecses 2020). The findings reveal shared embodied metaphors-such as light, elevation, fluidity and growth-alongside language-specific patterns: Hindi foregrounds sweetness, journey, illumination and moral-philosophical schemas, while Bangla emphasizes water-based and vulnerability-oriented metaphors. The study contributes to cross-cultural metaphor analysis and highlights the role of cultural and philosophical traditions in shaping emotion metaphors. The findings provide insights into the interplay of language, culture, and cognition.

This article examines the polysemous Russian discourse formula malo li ( chto ) in relation to its source constructions and compares its functions with Korean equivalents. The study addresses the difficulty of accurately describing multi-meaning Russian discourse formulas that require careful contextual analysis, as well as the lack of lexicographical descriptions of their functional correspondences in Korean. The aim of the article is to provide a systematic account of the polysemy of malo li ( chto ) and to identify the most accurate Korean non-compositional equivalents. The empirical material consists of over 8,000 examples of malo li ( chto ) and a vdrug extracted from the open-access databases “Russian Constructicon” and “Pragmaticon,” as well as from the National Corpus of the Russian Language, covering both written and spoken genres. Korean data collected from web resources were used for contrastive analysis. The study adopts a corpus-based methodology. The analysis demonstrates that the semantics and pragmatics of malo li ( chto ) can only be properly understood through analysis of its underlying constructions and usage contexts. Diachronic analysis identifies two meanings of the formula. One meaning, denoting an “indeterminate large quantity,” does not meet the criteria of a discourse formula and should be described in the Russian Constructicon as a non-typical elliptical construction. The other meaning, expressing devaluation of a prior utterance, satisfies the criteria of a discourse formula and should be included in the Pragmaticon. This distinction allows inconsistencies in the treatment of malo li ( chto ) across the two databases to be eliminated. A synchronic comparison with a vdrug clarifies the functional properties of malo li ( chto ) and reveals the illusion of their interchangeability based on surface similarity. Functional frame analysis further enables the identification of corresponding Korean discourse formulas. The proposed approach refines the description of Russian discourse formulas and provides a reliable basis for comparison with typologically distant languages such as Korean.