Invective in professional communication: pragmatic and linguistic aspects

The article presents the results of the research conducted by the author on the main parameters and functions of invectives used in professional communication (discourse of professional aviation, Navy, fire-fighters, sport, oilpumping, transport, etc.). The data represented by 1500 professional texts in Russian and English demonstrate both explicit and implicit invectives in all types of communities. The quantitative analyses pursued by the author proved that obscene and abusive vocabulary, cursing and jargon words are used only in 11 % of all the texts studied. Standard national and professional vocabulary acquires invective senses due to special communicative circumstances and situation. The invectiveness in professional communication is universally relative as it is evaluated differently by professionals and laymen. In case the cursive language and abusive vocabulary function as discursive conventions in a professional community the degree of their invectiveness is gradually blurring and decreasing in comparison with the same words used in the national discourse where taboos and restrictions are much more severe. Pejoratively connotated words, collocations, idioms are fulfilling mainly emphatic and esoteric functions. The spectrum of functions of both implicit and explicit invectives ranges from intensifying verbal aggression (devaluation, violence, plummeting the level of the addressee, manipulation) to marking "insiders" and "outsiders", reducing the psychological tension, compensate invective contextual senses, lessen or exclude physical violence.