The category of hostility as a unity of the sociocognitive and communicative dimensions

The article considers the category of hostility, or intolerance (the terms are used as synonyms), as a binary unity of its sociocognitive and communicative dimensions. Communicative categories are characterized in the paper as the most general concepts that organize a person’s knowledge about communication and the norms and rules of its implementation. Special attention is paid by the author to the communicative category of tolerance, which - according to its main characteristics (these include its anti-conflict and non-categorical character as well as non-impositivity) - is adjacent to the category of politeness. It is emphasized that communicative politeness and communicative tolerance are not identical in their nature. Based on the research by O. A. Mikhailova, the cognitive, ethical, and pragmatic foundations of the category of tolerance are described. It has been established that the category of hostility, or intolerance, is based on the same cognitive grounds as the category of tolerance, namely on the category of alienness and the category of identity that are represented in the speaker’s mind by friend-or-foe (we vs. they) opposition and play an important role in determining a person’s place in the world. The ethical foundations of the category of hostility are the categories of good and evil, as well as good and bad, which are not only of ethical but also of cognitive nature: the knowledge of good is used by a person to justify certain value positions. The pragmatic basis of the category of hostility is the motivation of subjects that is directly related to their psychological attitude. It is the motivation of the subject that allows us to study the sociocognitive dimension of the category of hostility and, as a consequence, its communicative aspect in more detail.