Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 2: Языкознание @jvolsu-linguistics
Статьи журнала - Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 2: Языкознание
Все статьи: 1619
The Affective Turn in Metamodernist Fiction and “New Sincerity”
Статья научная
The aim of the article is to analyze pragmatic strategies and mechanisms to enhance narrative empathy, the key notion of metamodernist fiction that distinguishes it from postmodernist and modernist literary texts. The article postulates foregrounding of emotivity markers in metamodernist texts as a linguistic manifestation of the cultural logic of "new sincerity" in the contemporary fiction that is characterized by the lack of an explicit ludic modality of postmodernist fiction and by stressing means of producing emotional resonance on the part of the reader and their active perspective-taking. The article makes an original contribution to cognitive stylistics, multimodal studies and narratology by hypothesizing polyphony of narrative "voices", second-person narrative and visual foregrounding as effective pragmalinguistic tools of triggering emotive and cognitive empathy that increases reader's immersion in metamodernist fictional worlds. Using the novels by M. Porter and J. Egan, the short stories by J.S. Foer and D. Eggers as its case studies, the article proves the relevance of viewing the "new sincerity" concept as a driving force behind the authorial empathy towards fictional characters, which enhances emotionogenic potential of metamodernist fiction and contributes to reader's engagement with modeled emotive situations. The findings of the research testify to the importance of further research into "new sincerity" and potential mechanisms of inducing reader's empathy which is justly considered a powerful instrument for promoting social interaction, helping readers of all ages to inhibit aggression and develop understanding of others' motives, emotions and desires.
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The all-seeing eye ofthe city from the perspective of urban communication studies
Статья научная
The research is carried out from the perspective of urban communication studies and uses the analytical sociolinguistic framework, which provides an opportunity to reveal the role of different semiotic signs in creating the image of a big city as an existential space. The paper focuses on surveillance as a common communication practice and investigates the system of Russian semiotic signs surrounding a citydweller as an object of surveillance. Signs construct the communicative situation of surveillance, which includes a subject, object, place, time, aim of surveillance and the consequences of actions seen as forbidden or undesirable. An important place in the study belongs to the notion of social visibility, which acquires a new meaning in the context of the research. The subjects of surveillance are unidentified representatives of power, whereas its objects are common citizens. Semiotic signs reflect the asymmetry of the social relationship between them (the subject of surveillance is invisible, the object is visible; the state demonstrates the paternalistic attitude towards its citizens). The modality of the message reflects the type of relationship between the subject and the object of surveillance and its social dynamics. The findings indicate that semiotic signs connected with surveillance become a powerful means of social stratification and regulate social relations in Russian urban discourse.
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The art of storytelling in the digital age: a multimodal perspective
Статья научная
Using Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony , Craig Silvey’s The Amber Amulet , and Jon McGregor’s In Winter the Sky as its case studies, this article attempts to explore a number of mechanisms and strategies contributing to the multimodal fiction construction and posing challenges for modern readers of all ages. The article proposes to examine multimodal resonance as a cognitive mechanism enhancing the emotional impact of multimodal stories on recipients and triggering the receptive mechanism of narrative empathy. Various semiotic resources, both free resources, such as photos, maps, and illustrations, and bound ones, including font types and typographical experiments, are analyzed from the standpoint of their role in fictional world creation. The article makes an original contribution to the Multimodal Stylistics Studies by hypothesizing the relevance of identifying two distinctive mechanisms of foregrounding: visual foregrounding as a range of formal ways to construct a multimodal text that focuses the reader’s attention with the help of free semiotic resources, and graphic foregrounding, which has bound semiotic resources at its heart. The findings of the research prove that it is the combination of elements of stylistic, cognitive and linguo-semiotic analyses that might provide a new and effective methodologyfor interpreting a multimodal literary text. The overall outcome testifies to the importance of further research into varied mechanisms of foregrounding as a complex phenomenon essential for our better understanding of the embodied character of reading.
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Статья научная
The article focuses on investigating the specifics of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) ideologeme in the website discourse of software vendors. The material of the study is the website discourse of Microsoft . The linguo-conceptual and discursive analyses have resulted in identifying the most frequent lexemes in dictionary entries and constructing the nominative field of the AI concept. We have carried out a corpus-assisted study of the linguistic representation of the AI ideologeme in the Microsoft discourse using AntConc and extracted keywords and collocations, including metaphorical ones, which make the ideologeme explicit through keywords such as responsible , businesses , change , etc., collocations: AI-ready culture , AI-human partnership , etc., metaphors based on the actions of living beings such as drive , dive , etc. The keywords and collocations create the intention-driven positive ideologeme of AI as a phenomenon regulated by competent bodies and empowering businesses to drive the positive change, along with amplifying the capabilities of human beings. The nonverbal means of the AI ideologeme have been described within the representative and interactive dimensions such as pictures of living beings, colors of nature such as green and blue, and metaphorical perspectives contributing to the discursive affinity of AI and nature. The corpus-assisted study has resulted in identifying the discursive representation of the AI ideologeme which is different from that of the dictionary entries describing AI as a machine capability to copy the human behavior.
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The language means of comicality in clickbait headings
Статья научная
The analysis of material presented in the media discourse demonstrates significant changes in the intentionality of the journalistic text, which are reflected in establishing contacts so as to grab and retain the reader’s attention. This feature of modern media text is represented in changing genre preferences, speech tactics and strategies, and, consequently, selecting and combining linguistic means. One of the manifestations of this trend is the phenomenon of clickbait, which is a communicative act of promising to continue communication. This article is dedicated to the clickbait with the semantics of comicality. The collected from the Russian-language Internet research material includes clickbait headings that promise a certain funny content. The study revealed that a clickbait model includes the following semantic components: a stimulating utterance of the subject of speech seeking to involve the reader in the humorous nature of hypertext; the verbal and non-verbal markers of the object of laughter; markers, which reflect Internet user’s involvement in the communicative act. The analysis of relationship between the components of a clickbait model resulted in specifying four types of clickbait headlines: 1) narrative headlines, which invite the reader to laugh what some other readers have already laughed at; 2) offering headlines suggesting some comic entertainment; 3) allusive clickbaits that hint on the possibility to continue amusing reading; 4) nominative clickbaits, which name the expected laughing reaction to the presentation of some objects.
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The language of health promotion in British and Russian digital media: a comparative study
Статья научная
The research explores the language of health promotion used in Health matters and Tak zdorovo - the national healthcare websites of the UK and Russia . The objective is to assess readability of the British and Russian texts as well as to reveal language properties and cultural implications of health promotion in national digital media. The comparative design of the study involves qualitative (contextual and interpretative) and quantitative (Compleat Lexical Tutor v.8.5 and Flesch-Kincaid grade) methods. The topic distribution results show that physical activity , healthy eating and weight control , tobacco smoking , alcohol dependence , mental health are raised in both cultures, however, the British corpus puts more emphasis on mental health issues compared to the Russian one. There are differences in ‘positive' vs ‘negative' approach in covering alcohol consumption issues. The findings on readability reveal higher rates of lexical density and lexical variety in the Russian corpus in comparison to the British one. However, the overall lexical coverage and readability index in the British (K-3) and Russian corpora (SIS - 8.68) are equally low, which means that the language of health promotion in both cultures is easy to understand. The Russian language of advice demonstrates frequent use of imperatives. The British corpus employs less categorical recommendation forms including modal verbs, create partnering communication styles and demonstrate a higher use of visual forms of health promotion. The findings revealing differences in rhetoric strategies (rational reasoning in British digital media vs emotional reasoning in Russian digital media) can be attributed to national and cultural implications.
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The main characteristics of stephen king’s idiostyle
Статья научная
The paper presents stylistic value of simile and metaphor as the major features of Stephen King’s idiostyle. The linguistic analysis of some novels (1408, Carrie, The Shining, Dreamcatcher, Dead Zone) is aimed at discovering sematic and structural types of simile and metaphor, revealing their functions in the content development. Structural analysis of simile and metaphor constituency in the above mentioned novels resulted in allocating some formal patterns: a one-term verbal simile (as if... verb, verb... like... verb), a two-term attribute simile (noun-like), a two-term or three-term nominative simile, and simple (a one-image) or expanded pattern of metaphor. The sematic analysis of Stephen King’s novels lets reveal the compound character of simile and metaphor use. Both tropes are used predominantly to create tension in narration that is often raised up to the atmosphere of horror, the latest is considered by the researchers to be a major feature of the idiostyle of the author under study. Having described some semantic ways of expanding horror, death, savageness, mood and expressiveness with similes and metaphors, the researchers concluded that these tropes perform leading functions in personalizing Stephen King’s idiostyle: constructing images and describing feelings that characters are going into along with creating the tone of tension and horror; performing common stylistic function despite the fact that they differ in the way the atmosphere of tension and horror is built: explicit realization in simile and implicit by various types of morphemes in metaphor.
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Статья научная
This study is devoted to the development of the author's method “The Matrix of Cognitive Filters” (MCF). It is used to model the process of inferring the meaning of creative elements (linguocreatemes) in multimodal online discourse. To accomplish this task, key cognitive mechanisms for generating the meaning of linguocreatemes were identified and researched. These are banner blindness, evaluative categorization and conceptualization, (de)compression of information and profiling, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metaphtonymy, and conceptual integration. Monomodal verbal and multimodal linguocreatemes (more than 18,000 units) were selected with a continuous sampling method from English-language Internet resources, visual and verbal corpora. Theoretical analysis showed that the MCF can be used to model the overall ability of a linguocreateme to initiate cognitive resonance in a recipient. This method also allows for the collection of data on the probabilistic prediction of the level of cognitive resonance and positive or negative dissonance in an addressee. The empirical data obtained during a practical linguistic-cognitive experiment among English-speaking respondents from across countries confirmed the theoretical results of the study. The participants had to infer the general meanings of several multimodal linguocreatemes in accordance with the MCF. The experiment confirmed the feasibility of using this method to assess the occurrence of cognitive resonance, positive or negative dissonance, as well as obtaining additional data on the recipient's reactions to different linguocreatemes in English online discourse.
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The multimodal constitution of objects: how church viewing is accomplished
Статья научная
Based on a single case analysis, this essay examines the question of what the structure of a church viewing is like. Within a theoretical framework which conceptualizes the church viewing as a cultural practice, “object constitution” is regarded as a central aspect and as a visitor ’s active achievement. For the composition of the church viewings corpus, visitors were not only filmed whilst walking through the church interior and visually perceiving certain aspects of the architecture, but were also asked to verbally comment their visual perceptions. The church viewing corpus was recorded with two cameras: an action camera, documenting from the church visitors’ perspective; the other a contextual camera following the visitors on their way through the church interior. This experimental design, which uses the verbal commenting of the visitors’ own perception as a scientific method, allows reconstructing their church viewing concepts as a dynamic interplay of their visual selection und perception of the church interior and the verbal commenting of their visual perception. The single case analysis proves that object constitution is in fact a visitor ’s active accomplishment by which parts of the church interior are brought forth in a new way: Anton, the analysed visitor, who examines in detail two large paintings hanging on the wall, constitutes them as “picture frames”.
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The nature of Chinese and Russian subcultures in urban discourse
Статья научная
The paper seeks to examine the communicative aspect of modern Chinese and Russian urban subcultures. The nominations of urban social groups representing young people in Russia and China and their connection to modern communication practices are viewed from the perspective of urban communication studies, which provides an opportunity for a new comprehension of issues connected with verbal and nonverbal constituents of urban discourse. The indicates that the subcultures in the Russian urban landscape are reflected in such nominations as фрики (freaki), мажоры (majory), хипстеры (hipstery), брейк-дансеры (break-dancery), байкеры (bikery), etc. The Chinese subcultures are known under such names as shamate, xiaoqingxin, tuyayawenhua, erciyuanyawenhua, egaoyawenhua and many others. We argue that in both countries the unity of social subgroups is based not so much on ideological preferences, but rather on lifestyles, hobbies and interests, many of them formed under the Western influence. The subcultures discussed in the research represent a broad panorama of Chinese and Russian social life. They reflect the sociocultural dynamics of attitudes, values and lifestyles influenced by globalization but acquiring nationally specific features, which transform them into unique sociocultural phenomena.
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The problem of studying neologisms and their influence on the ecology of language
Статья научная
The article raises the issues of neology and ecolinguistics. The authors specify the criteria of ecolinguistic approach to studying neologisms based on ecolinguistic monitoring which helps to elicit factors that influence the formation of new words, spheres in which they function in language as well as to define the type of new words and number of loanwords among them. The data under analysis is compiled by about 3 000 new words that appeared in English and Dutch in the last three decades. The authors elicit the main changes in the ecology of the Dutch language on different levels in the stated time frame together with the factors that motivate the formation of neologisms. Among extralinguistic factors the authors list such determinants as the emergence of new realia; scientific and technical advancement; globalization and development of the Internet. To intralinguistic factors the following are referred: linguistic economy; expressiveness of linguistic means; systematization of the vocabulary; unification of linguistic signs; conversion and the shift in stylistic usage of the words can also generate neologisms. Future development of the ecolinguistic approach in neology will help to track the evolution of modern national language and preserve its ecolinguistic balance. The research results can be used in language education, lexicographic practice or state language policy.
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Статья научная
To date, the traditional fantasy genre that has its roots in European folklore is transforming as authors seek new, fresh mythological foundations and exotic forms of narration. In an attempt to conquer foreign markets, some of them deploy Slavic mythology and embed words of Slavic origin to create their magical worlds. However, the resulting product is often a Pan-Slavic fantasy universe that refers to no specific culture. In this research, 'pseudo-ethnics' denotes an exotic atmosphere created by words associated with a broad linguacultural cluster. The object of the study was the vocabulary used to denote pseudo-Slavic realities in the novel Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo and its film adaptation, as well as the translation techniques employed by the Russian translators. Leigh Bardugo used pseudo-Russian anthroponyms, toponyms and words that denote everyday objects and magical creatures. They represent Latinized Russian borrowings and seemingly authentic neologisms that deploy some morphological and phonetic language features an English-speaking reader might associate with the Slavic culture. However, when translated for an audience with a Slavic ethnic background, the pseudo-ethnic fantasy book or film loses its exotic flavor. The translation techniques for Latinized Russian words conveying the pseudo-ethnic atmosphere are de-transliteration and de-transcription. As part of the translation, translators had to adhere to the grammar rules of the Russian language and eliminate grammatical errors in parts of speech or gender.
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The pseudonymous code of G. Chkhartishvili
Статья научная
This paper sets out to systematize the multiple pseudonyms used by the contemporary writer G. Chkhartishvili. These are B. Akunin ( The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, The Adventures of Sister Pelagia, a series of novels The Adventures of the Master, the project Genres, the plays The Seagull, Yin and Yang, the project The History of the Russian State ), Boris Akunin and Grigory Chkhartishvili ( Cemetery Stories ), Akunin-Chkhartishvili ( Aristonomy, Another Way ), Grigory Chkhartishvili ( The Writer and Suicide ), Anatoly Brusnikin ( Devyatny Spas, Hero of Another Time, Bellona ) and Anna Borisova ( Kreativschik, There, The Seasons ). We investigate reasons for the multiplicity of Akuninian pseudonyms, a strategically honed system of which contributes to his authorial image. It is shown that, while the commercial pseudonyms are aimed at promoting his new literary projects and are implemented through a conspiracy game played with the reader, the creative ones serve to manifest the author’s breadth of interests and philological knowledge such that every new pen name triggers a new writing strategy and a new creative tactic. The analysis of various literary masks’ influence on the author’s creative outcome shows that each pseudonym is ‘placed’ in the literary, genre or artistic time of the text. B. Akunin is primarily the author of historical retro-detective stories, whereas adventure novels are signed by the pen name of A. Brusnikin. A. Borisova ‘writes’ prose set in the present day. From the very beginning, the author ’s real name has been always assigned to his serious literature. The authorial system of names is being constantly refined, distinguishing B. Akunin, the fiction writer, from G. Chkhartishvili, the elite literature writer, in the novels Aristonomy and Another Way the twinned name Akunin-Chartishvili deliver another conceptual image. In conclusion it is stated that the abundance of Chartishvili’s pen names evinces the author’s intellectual and personal intrigue, which points to multiconceptual character of their pseudonymous code, being auto- and self-marketing, creative auto- and self-identification.
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The russian language test: towards assessing text comprehension
Статья научная
Reading comprehension relies on a variety of complex skills that are not effectively assessed by existing Russian language tests. At the same time, Russian textbooks are criticized both for their low text quality and high text complexity. This study addresses issues of Russian language proficiency and comprehension assessment with the development of the Russian Language Test (RLT) . The RLT was constructed to measure proficiency relevant to textbook comprehension, such as grammar and vocabulary knowledge, establishing propositional meaning and inferencing. Results from this initial study including 81 fifth-grade and 94 ninth-grade students confirm that students struggle with grammatical inferences and identifying the main idea in a text. Additionally, three standardized Russian exams, VPR, OGE, EGE are analyzed, affording an overview of the testing system for the Russian language from the elementary through high school education levels. This study demonstrates promise for the use of the RLT as a language proficiency assessment and provides a broad context for understanding the current state of Russian language tests for native speakers.
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The syntax and semantics of the perfect structure: a comparative approach
Статья научная
The article covers some issues that concern the syntax and semantics of the present perfect construction in English and other languages. It states that all Present Perfects may be associated with what is considered the canonical construal in which an assertion is located at the present time but reports the existence of a past situation. However, some Present Perfects may, in addition, have a simple past aorist meaning. The author focuses on pluractional and evidential construals of the Present Perfect in some languages, argue that the Passé Composé construal and the Aorist construal of the perfect construction belong to two different modes of discourse, discours and récit , underlines their variability associated with a complex syntactic structure (an auxiliaryverb and a verbal participle for Present Perfect, while the Aorist construal is associated with a simple verbal structure). According to the author, the Perfect has both syntactic and analytical ways of realization, thus the analytical syntactic structure of the Perfect is in English, French and German, with both a tensed auxiliaryverb and a past participle, whereas it is synthetic in Latin, Russian and Arabic as is presented in the past participle alone; in languages with overt aspectual marking, aspect mayvaryon either the auxiliary, if it exists, or on the participle.
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The verbalization of emotions in social and cultural aspects
Статья обзорная
The article deals with the role of the language in the interpretation of emotions, their adequate perception and comprehension in a foreign language. The existence of «cognitive scenarios» helps the recipients to perceive and interpret the emotions in both native and foreign languages in the process of bilingual communication.
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The “internationalist” Rosa Luxemburg as a translator
Статья научная
This article is devoted to the description of the translation activity of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most influential representatives of the German and European revolutionary left-wing Social Democracy. She was proficient in the Polish, Russian, German and French languages, and she conducted active propaganda, an important component of which consisted in the translation of works and articles by prominent Social Democrats into German and Polish. The author of the article carries out a diachronic analysis of the translation activity of Rosa Luxemburg. It is noted that translations from Russian and Polish played an important role in the preparation of the doctoral dissertation by Rosa Luxemburg. The dissertation was presented in Switzerland and dealt with the problems of Poland’s industrial development. The translatological evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg’s translations has not yet been undertaken, and the relevance of the given research consists in the new interpretation of the ways of forming the political discourse of the Social Democrats in Europe at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s main translations allows noting that the translation of Vladimir Korolenko’s book The History of my Contemporary, which was published after her tragic death, is of the highest importance among all the translations. The translation of V. Korolenko’s book was republished many times, and the prospect of the article consists both in evaluating the quality of R. Luxemburg’s translation and in analyzing the perception of this book in Europe during the entire 20th century until 1985, when it was included in the Library of World Literature of the Zurich publishing house Manesse-Verlag.
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To believe in the old church slavonic gospel translation (codex marianus)
Статья научная
Drawing on theoretical definition of a speech act, the paper seeks to compare the theoretical semantics of BELIEVE with the lexical semantics of the words used in the Old Slavonic Gospel translation for expressing different modes of believing. The general principles in the use of the verb в4ровати and related paraphrasing utterances in comparison to Greek according to the majority of instances have been considered. The historical use of lexical material shows that the development of different ways of morphosyntactic use reflects the development of communication practices which are an index of societal behaviour. The author states it that the comparison of the speech act BELIEVE with contested lexical semantics provided the conclusion that a verb *věriti cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Slavic, but at the period under analysis the concept BELIEVE was verbalized by в4ровати with the primary personal meaning of “believe in someone” (the dative of a person is needed in constructions like “I have faith in Him”). It is supposed that the necessity to introduce the verb *věriti appeared when people started to extend the personal meaning of BELIEVE upto “an impersonal believed object” (sematic bleaching), and if they did it the verb *věriti might had been analogically produced as derivation of the primary noun. The author concludes that the translation technique of the first Slavonic Bible is more ad sensum than ad verbum and sometimes even reveals theological considerations of the translator.The speech act BELIEVE seems to display semantic bleaching as it loses its transcendent truth conditions and becomes more and more connected with impersonal believed objects.
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Toxic communication zones and emotive markers in the Russian-language work environment
Статья научная
The paper addresses the problems of toxic communications in the workplace and considers lexical and grammatical means of expressing emotions. The material for the study was former workers’ comments and anonymous questionnaires completed by current employees of Russian enterprises. Based on empirical data processed under Fisher’s angular transformation method, which enabled highly accurate comparison of small samples, three toxic communication zones in industrywere identified: the zones of toxic bosses, toxic management, and toxic workers. The authors performed a Likert scale survey of executives, managers, and workers. The results of single-factor and two-factor analysis of variance helped us to establish the relation between toxic communication and so-called toxicity focuses, that is, standard topics which are constantly in the centre of destructive communications in the workplace. The paper determines lexical and grammatical means of expressing emotions which are emotive markers of toxic communication (affectives and connotatives). It shows that abusive words and phrases, zoolexics, vernacular and slang vocabulary, colloquial emotionally colored vocabulary, and phraseological units are equally relevant for all three zones of toxic communication zones. Quantitative analysis of the identified emotive markers in terms of their structural and morphological characteristics revealed the abundance of interjections, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs of degree and intensity.
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Transformation of communicative and emotional values in Russian linguoculture
Статья научная
Values are generally accepted guidelines that are important for the formation, development and existence of both the individual and society. In his communicative practice, a person relies on universal and culturally-based values, which, in turn, are subject to evolution or degradation at various stages of social development. The authors of the article, guided by the idea of the flexibility and variability of values in certain historical epochs, attempt to demonstrate that at present, due to social and cultural processes, communicative and emotional values in Russian linguistic culture undergo certain change, which transforms the existing system of values. The researchers’ attention is focused on such communicative values as truth and modesty, which seem to be unconditional and absolute moral and ethical guidelines for representatives of Russian linguistic culture. The analyzed material from the National Corpus of the Russian language, Internet forums and examples from live conversation show that in the modern Russian-speaking consciousness, truthful and modest communicative behavior is interpreted and evaluated a little differently than before. Similar to communicative values, the value of emotions is also subject to transformation. As an example of the inversion of the linguocultural value of emotions, we consider the emotion of anger, which is among the universal human emotions. The analysis of modern feature films allows us to conclude that anger and other destructive emotions of the protagonist can be recognized as a constructive force that changes the world for the better, and its positive assessment leads to such behavior being socially approved in real life.
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