Mass Culture Irony: Russian Refusal/Objection Ironic Speech Cliches with Regard to the Category of Politeness

The paper examines Russian refusal/objection ironic cliches and their functioning in speech communication. The author defines and characterizes the communicative situation of their use. It is proposed to divide individual and mass culture irony and to consider ironic cliches as a kind of the latter. The Russian refusal/ objection ironic cliches realize face-threatening acts (FTA-s) twice. Firstly, they refer to refusal/objection, and secondly, they express mockery, ridicule. They belong to the conceptual field of anti-politeness. The paper discusses the regularities of their formation: hyperbolization and simultaneous existence in two moduses: truth and lie, i.e. saying "yes," I do not hide my "no." The author describes the role relations between the speaker and the addressee in typical situations of an ironic reaction to a request/assumption. The analysis of about three hundred examples shows that the speaker expresses or establishes asymmetric relations with the addressee. The scrutiny resulted in identifying the time period when refusal/objection ironic cliches appeared in modern Russian. The paper also highlights the strategies for their translation into English. It is suggested that the speech cliches of refusal/ objection are culturally specific and that the pragmatics of their use can be correlated with the laughter culture of ancient Russia.