The concept of laughter in Vladimir Lenin's polemic book Materialism and empirio-criticism

The year 2017 was marked by the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, in 2020 Vladimir Lenin’s 150th anniversary was celebrated, in 2022 the 100th anniversary of the USSR formation was celebrated, so interest in Lenin’s literary heritage is increasing among Russian scholars. A new reading of Lenin’s books provides for studying them not as philosophical works, but as polemic texts. The material for the research was drawn from Lenin’s treatise Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. The purpose of this article is to analyze the concept of laughter as Lenin’s polemic tool. The research objectives are to identify the micro-conceptual set of the laughter macro-concept; to determine the functions of the studied concept; to reveal Lenin’s accompanying grammatical and lexical polemic tools; and to clarify the specific speech impact of Lenin’s polemic text. The author used the methods of literary and textual analysis, interpretation and comparative analysis. The research novelty is in the fact that this study analyzes Lenin’s text through the prism of the linguoconceptological approach. The author unfolds before the reader a set of Lenin’s polemic techniques, defining the contextual meaning of each of them. The author defines the technique of derision as a rhetorical tool and a method of verbal suggestive influence on the audience, which also can be qualified as a part of the self-presentation strategy.