The concept «social distance» in social and humanitarian sciences: the history of development and the prospects of studying

The article observes the content of the concept «social distance» in sociological, psychological and linguistic researches. It develops the representation of social distance as an integral phenomenon that has such features as «closeness» and «detachment » at the same time. It offers the multi-level model of social distance with account of the variety of the types of means of social signalization - from spatial to semantic speech and language representations of social relations. The article also marks some new opportunities to analyze the phenomenon «social distance», which are connected with intentional structures of communication, the dynamics of social representations in ontogenesis, and also with the using of methods of speech psychology, psycholinguistics and psychosemantics.