Communicative strategies and tactics in sport trashtalking

The paper concerns statements of sportsmen from perspective of their goals and intentions. We classify these statements as statements of sports trashtalking - form of verbal aggression in sports discourse. Targeted and intentional verbal aggression toward opponent in sports trashtalking is aimed at humiliation of opponent and destabilization of emotional state, which can have an impact on results of a bout and image and career of athlete. The object of research is verbal aggression in sports discourse. The subject of the research is linguistic means used by perpetrators of verbal aggression during press conferences and interviews aimed at achieving communicative goals and intentions. The aim of this work is to reveal communicative strategies and tactics of sports trashtalking implementing in statements of sportsmen. Footages of press conferences and interviews of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fighters are used as material for study. For research of linguistics means we use methods of syntactic and semantic analysis; method of contextual analysis is used for determination of speech concept. As a result of material analysis strategy of direct active aggression, strategy of direct passive aggression and strategy of indirect passive aggression were identified as main verbal aggression strategies actively used in communications behavior of sportsmen.