Russian Language Studies

Business communication has significantly expanded its arsenal of tools and begun to embrace technologies that were previously platforms for private informal communication: social networks and messengers. The relevance and novelty of our research are due to the fact that contemporary digital etiquette in business correspondence, not yet subjected to linguistic analysis, requires not only description and codification but also analysis of the transformations that influence changes in the communicative behavior of participants in business internet communication. The aim of the research is to analyze the elements of informal internet communication inherent in messengers and their influence on modern digital business correspondence. The hypothesis is that the shift of business communication to messengers leads to an increasingly oral-like nature of written business internet communication: it becomes more dynamic, more dialogical, and the norms of business communication are transformed, becoming less rigid. The main research method is a sociolinguistic survey in the form of an internet questionnaire. The research material includes data from mass internet surveys conducted from 2017 to 2024 in O.V. Lukinova’s “Digital Etiquette” Telegram channel. Internet memes were sporadically used to illustrate and confirm assessments in the linguistic reflection of internet users. The authors conclude that business communication in messengers is simultaneously influenced by several factors: business epistolary tradition, email etiquette, and patterns of informal communication that were originally inherent in messengers. Under the influence of the latter, the role of politeness formulas changes in digital business correspondence, a balance between the synchronicity and asynchronicity of communication is sought, the role of graphical symbols changes, and the oral-written nature of internet communication is reconsidered. The research perspective is a comparative analysis of certain etiquette formulas, elements, and details of traditional and electronic business correspondence.

The study discusses the linguo-pragmatic potential of verification markers in the discourse of Russian Internet media. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the linguistic and general humanitarian significance of identifying and interpreting the linguopragmatic effects of nonstandard use of verifiers as a manifestation of active processes in the Russian language. The aim of the study is to analyze the factive predicates выяснилось ‘ it was found out’, установлено ‘it was established’, подтвердилось ‘it was confirmed’, было доказано ‘it was proved’, стало известно ‘it became known’, etc. in the context of propositional attitudes and their role in the discursive implementation of non-cooperative communication strategies in Russian speech. The method of linguo-pragmatic interpretation of non-usual communicative strategies is used, based on a complex research procedure for describing active processes in the Russian language, on the method of cognitive-discursive analysis of corpus data, as well as on the ideas and principles of foreign applied and “affective” pragmatics. The research material is language data from the newspaper subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus (200 contexts with verifiers). The study describes ambiguous and internally contradictory models of factual propositional knowledge attitudes and their discursive implementation in propositions that do not have a reference to a reliable and/or proven fact. A connection has been established between such cases and models of language anomality, because a speaker normally cannot have contradictory intentions. It is shown that these cases contain a contradiction between the propositional knowledge attitude obtained with certainty and the uncertain content of the proposition. For pragmatic anomalies generated by verifiers, a “conflict of modalities” has been established (reliable and unreliable, factual and hypothetical, knowledge and assumption, etc.). It is concluded that such non-usual uses of verification markers are associated either with the intention of the media text author to implement a manipulative strategy de re , or just with the speaker’s insufficient linguistic and communicative competence within the framework of bona fide . The prospects for the study are in the expansion of its empirical base with discursive indicators of truth ( истинно ‘truly’, подлинно ‘actually’, действительно ‘really’, etc.), as well as by involving other highly influential discourses (political, advertising, poetic, etc.).

The study deals with the ways of compressive word formation, which are active in the modern Russian language, and reveals their dynamic processes. The aim of the study is to determine the leading trends in the development of compressive word formation in the modern Russian language. The relevance of the work is conditioned by the necessity of multidimensional study of active processes in the modern Russian language. Contexts extracted from modern fiction texts, records of oral speech, examples of compressives in the media and the Internet are used as material. The study describes and compares such ways of compression word formation as truncation, addition, abbreviation, and nominalization. Especially high productivity of truncation and univerbation in modern Russian speech is noted. It is shown that compressive word formation is currently characterized by new tendencies: active borrowing, expansion of compressives of different types and spheres of their use in modern Russian speech, formation of new ways of compressive wordformation, spread of truncation on words of different parts of speech. The increasing frequency of contaminated formations in modern Russian speech is revealed. Studies of trends of compressive word formation in the modern Russian language show the correlation of ways of word formation in synchronicity and detailed analysis of derivational processes taking into account the principle of linguistic economy.

The relevance of the topic is determined by the need for a more comprehensive analysis of the linguistic and creative activity of users in computer-mediated communication, achieved through language play. In informal computer-mediated communication, the phenomenon of language play, as a manifestation of linguistic creativity, serves as a means of self-presentation and entertainment, impacting all levels of the language system, primarily the orthographic and lexical level, as well as the level of word-formation. The aim of the study is thus to identify the most frequent patterns of language play in informal computer-mediated communication based on data collected from Russian-language Internet forums. Research material were texts of messages exchanged by users within the framework of informal, relaxed communication on Russian-language Internet forums, participants of which are residents of the Russian Federation, as well as post-Soviet countries and other countries around the world. Based on the material selected by means of a complete sampling from October 2022 to March 2024, the author’s card index was compiled, numbering 396 contexts in which various types of language games are presented. For the purposes of the study, methods of continuous sampling, direct observation of language use, contextual, semantic and stylistic analysis, analysis of word-formation processes as well as descriptive and analytical approach were applied. The novelty of the work is due to the specifics of the linguistic material and is associated with the analysis of specific ways of manifestation of linguistic creativity in Internet discourse. The theoretical framework of the present paper focuses on the studies of Russian and foreign scholars in the field of language play and linguistic creativity. It has been established that anonymity of communication on the forum promotes spontaneity and freedom of expression, and also creates favorable conditions for the linguistic and creative activities of communicants, realized through a language play, which is carried out using linguistic means of different levels. The analysis of the collected data made it possible to identify the most frequent language play techniques in informal computer-mediated communication on Russian-language Internet forums, such as the nonstandard use of graphic characters, the creation of nonce words and the various changes involving phraseological units, quotes and other fixed expressions. Prospects for the research are seen in further study of the linguistic and creative potential of computer-mediated communication using the material of the Russian language, as well as conducting comparative studies using primarily data from other Slavic languages.

Since 2020, the term “metaverse” has been spontaneously used in both scientific and media discourse, particularly in relation to multiplayer virtual worlds and the new generation of the Internet Web3. These resources spontaneously form artificial language environments, which are sometimes used within the communicative approach to foreign language teaching. However, there is no common definition of the metaverse in the scientific literature. The aim of this study is to analyze the linguodidactic potential of virtual language environments in metaverses for communicative teaching of Russian as a foreign language. This study examines the features of metaverses in the context of virtual learning and the broader scientific discourse dedicated to modern approaches to computer-assisted linguodidactics. The research employed a comprehensive set of methods, including scientific observation, critical analysis of literature, study and synthesis of foreign language learning experiences using v-learning technologies as described by foreign scientists, and terminological analysis. The study resulted in an analysis of the linguodidactic potential based on the most current scientific works on the topic. A set of identified features led to an updated understanding of the metaverse as a technology in education. The findings suggest that virtual language environments in metaverses have high linguodidactic potential for communicative teaching of Russian. Virtual language environments in metaverses possess several properties inherent to real ones, which enhances students’ motivation and deep engagement in the learning process. This prospectively justifies the expansion of these technologies in distance learning of Russian as a foreign language.

The research is devoted to the conflictual linguistic personality of a hater as one of the types of cybercommunication which are rapidly gaining popularity, namely, hating as a purposeful type of speech aggression on the Internet. The relevance of the proposed research is determined by the need to consider a new communicative reality in the modern Internet space and identify new forms of communication between members of the network community. The aim of the study is to describe the characteristic features of hating in modern Internet discourse, identify stereotypical features of haters, and consider the ideas about haters in the linguistic consciousness of communicants. The material was the scientific works of domestic and foreign scientists on virtual linguistic personality, as well as more than 300 interactions from popular Russian-language Internet chats where communicants resort to various speech strategies and tactics. The authors used linguisticcultural, linguistic-pragmatic, descriptive methods, as well as elements of contextual-situational and intentional analysis. Synchronous Internet discourse is presented as a media platform for interaction, as well as the verbal and non-verbal impact of communication participants on each other and on a wide audience of users in general. The main characteristics of the modern cognitive and communicative space of the Internet (hypertextuality, virtuality, crealization, etc.) are highlighted and described in detail, and the characteristics of the speech behavior of the main virtual linguistic and cultural types are given. As a result of the study of one of the key linguistic and cultural types - the conflicting linguistic personality of a hater - the following characteristics of his speech behavior were revealed: a dynamic manipulative scenario, targeting and subjectivity, an attitude towards obtaining a perlocutionary effect when achieving the goal of pleasure, satisfaction, and selfadmiration that the hater needs. It is also shown that, as a rule, famous and popular personalities are chosen as the object of cyber aggression for the manifestation of online hating; there is no objective assessment or criticism in the comments of the haters, their speech activity is exclusively destructive. The prospect of further research is related to the application of the proposed integrative approach to the study of other types of cyber aggression: flaming, trolling, cyberbullying, etc.

The relevance of the work is determined by the neccessity in: 1) studying the interaction of lexical and grammatical semantics in characterizing situations that have a common conceptual basis of movement (chronological and spatial); 2) studying non-central grammatical phenomena, their semantics largely depending on the linguistic environment; 3) creating a system of subcategorization of non-standard taxis situations. The aim of the work is to identify the range of simultaneity situations expressed with finite verbs and adverbial participles with the semantics of movement contrasted in non-causativeness / causativeness. The material was literary texts of the XX-XXI centuries from the main subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. Utterances with noncausative verbs of movement and causative adverbial participles of movement were analyzed. The material under study is peculiar due to the fact that the meaning of simultaneity is determined by the interaction of the lexical meanings of non-causative verbs of movement and causative adverbial participles of movement and extralinguistic factors. The main research method is functional analysis based on the theory of categorical situations by A.V. Bondarko. As a result of the study, two main types of aspectual-taxis situations were identified: the simultaneity of movement processes and the simultaneity of integral facts of movement. The simultaneity of movement processes includes 3 situations: 1) simultaneity of movement processes in the middle fixed periods; 2) prospective simultaneity of movement processes; 3) retrospective simultaneity of movement processes. The simultaneity of integral facts of movement includes 2 situations: 1) simultaneity of the results of integral movement facts; 2) simultaneity of integral movement facts when the result of causative movement is not actualized. The prospects for the work are to continue studying the role of lexical semantics in Russian taxis constructions and to compare utterances with adverbial participles.

The importance of addressing both theoretical and practical challenges of lexicography in the process of mastering, accumulating, and transmitting knowledge, which is materialized in language, is unquestionable. The relevance of the study is fueled by the enduring interest of researchers in the problems associated with developing academic traditions of Russian lexicography. The aim of the study is axiological analysis of stylistic markers, an important component of the lexicography metalanguage, and their systematization, which forms a methodological basis for further scholarly work in this field. This is because the research is based on the lexicographic tradition established by the prominent linguist D.N. Ushakov in the normative academic “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” (1935-1940), a harmonious and sequential approach to the lexicographic parameterization of the Russian language, characterizing the stylistic status of words. The methodology of comprehensive research included general scientific methods of observation, comparison, analysis, and the contextual method in assessing stylistic deviations of normative stylistic markers. The consistent idea in the study is that the results of the conducted research testify to the foresight of D.N. Ushakov as a linguist, who anticipated the development of axiological issues in Russian language studies and the special role of stylistic qualification of words, their close connection with the evaluative nature of words in negative and positive semantics. The prospects for studying the system of stylistic markers as an important component of lexicography metalanguage are clear; they highlight the position of the word in the system of literary language, its expressiveevaluative connotations. The modern picture of studying the stylistic stratification of the lexicon remains a significant research object at the current stage of the Russian language in the diversity of prospective methods of lexicographic stylistics.