Polyparadigmatic status of the communicative category of alterity

The article is focused on the issue of alterity in the context of contemporary communicative and cultural processes. The research is enhanced by the necessity to establish methodological grounds of the communicative category of alterity within scientific linguistic frames of cognitive linguistics, ethnopsycholinguistics, social linguistics, semiotics, emotive linguistics, linguistic ecology, thus introducing an innovative complementary theoretical base of alterity as a category of linguistics. The lingvophilosophical approach to the problem reveals the polyparadigmatic status of the category under scrutiny that is defined as a many-aspect phenomenon, as well as identifying a number of its aspects - parameters (e.g.: singularity - plurality; similarity - difference; standard - nonstandard; definiteness - nondefiniteness, etc.) and their correlation with functions of communication (e.g.: pragmatic, orienting, adapting and others), which makes ground for the supposition that alterity in its parameters and the functions of communication are interdependable notions. The theoretical significance of the research is manifested in the fact that the parametres of alterity as a category enhance more precise interpretation of the latter in communicative situations which contain a certain number of specifiers to be defined in order to improve the lexicographical aspect of the phenomen as well as some issues in theory and practice of communication including solutions to geopolitical and social problems.