Current trends in the development of modern sociolinguistics

Problem statement. The article is devoted to a brief description of some pressing problems in the field of sociolinguistics as a special section of linguistics, predetermined by the social nature of the language. Objective: based on our own research experience, to identify a list of problems of the most popular areas of modern sociolinguistics, in the field of which there are various studies of socially stratified verbal communication. Research results. The traditional problems identified in the 60-es of the XX century in Russian sociolinguistics have undergone significant changes due to changes in the social stratification of society in the post-Soviet space. The deepening of the process of social inequality, in the light of the isomorphism of social and linguistic phenomena, leads to the complication of forms of communication, the development of methods of language manipulation. In this regard, it is impossible to underestimate the mobilization role of the media, verbal artifacts of which, moreover, often embodied with numerous violations of cultural and speech norms, construct a kind of virtual reality creating a manipulative discourse of the media. Conclusions: the specific features of modern sociolinguistics include the following: 1) on the basis of the variability of linguistic units, in particular, in political discourse, communicative strategies and tactics of manipulative influence on public consciousness are built; 2) the description of the results of a mass associative experiment demonstrates the most objective data on the scale of ethno-cultural values of modern society.