“Genre”: A nomadic concept or an aesthetic universal?

The article raises the problem of the metadisciplinary interpretation of the term “genre”, which can be equally well defined as a nomadic concept or as an artistic universal. The author focuses on the question of the configuration of features defining the concept of genre in philology, art history, and musicology. Taking as a basis the general aesthetic principles of genre specification – functional, thematic, and structural – the author analyzes their genre-forming potential in various artistic forms and comes to the conclusion that understanding genre as a communicative and formally meaningful category provides an interdisciplinary dialogue, but at the same time, genre dominants can be different. For speech genres, such a dominant is a communicative goal, for painting genres – a subject content. The semantic parameter of the genre is interpreted in a similar way in literary criticism and musicology. The division into primary and secondary genres is a common feature for both philology and musicology. The structural parameter includes compositional features and elements of genre style, and the specific weight of this parameter is especially high in canonical (protoliterary and literary) and primary musical genres. The meaning of the structural features of the genre is inversely proportional to the visualization of an artistic form. This parameter is least significant for the genre identification of a painting.

Heart-moving stories about kitties in Runet in the paradigm of the genres of volunteer discourse

The article deals with heart-moving stories about kitties published on the Internet by the Moscow adoption center for cats “Murkosha”, which are studied in connection with the dominants of the volunteer discourse. The article focuses on speech genre and narrative characteristics of these stories. It is shown that their specific language, text, and other features are secondary to the main goal – to influence the reader, to induce him either to take the cat directly or to help the adoption center financially. Accordingly, the means that make it possible to enhance the impact come to the fore: expression, different types of direct appeal to moral imperatives, playing with values; at the syntax level – an abundance of direct and indirect directives. The author shows some speechgenre connections of the heart-moving stories about kitties with other genres of volunteer and non-volunteer (advertising) discourse: they are united by the role of indirect communication in text-building and (usually not directly named) practical illocutionary goal; but they demostrate a different attitude to the values that the author of the heart-moving stories about kitties operates (among them the main one is the increase in the amount of love and goodness in the world). The cat is presented in a humanized form (the method of personification) (hence, and not only from “advertising” intentionality, there is a lot of indirect communication, including metaphors, pastiche of various “human” genres), most often as a child. Hence – many “children’s” genres, imitation of the features of children’s speech and speech of adults in communication with children. The method of personification determines the greatest variety of expressive means when describing the “most metaphorical” components of a cat’s image (frame actants): the “character” of the cat and the “communication” (friendship, love) of the cat and the owner. The article analyzes illocutionary types of heart-moving stories about kitties, identified by the authors themselves and marked with smilies (emergency message for help; the story of a cat that entered the adoption center and is ready to be handed over to the future owner; a message about the need for especially careful treatment of a cat with physical or psychological problems; an adoption center that found a family; “letter from home” from new owners) and narrative types (narrative with partially expressed authorship; mixed (authorship) narratives; pastiche of the “dialogue” of a cat with an adoption center employee; “narrative” on behalf of a cat, etc.). A separate micro-study deals with the heart-moving stories frame structure, where the actants / slots are distinguished: a cat (external data, diseases, and other physical and / or psychological problems, “psychology” of a cat); a past owner of a cat, a new or future owner of a cat; street, street life, homelessness, dangers; adoption center for cats “Murkosha” and its staff. There is a characteristic of the use and distribution of linguistic means (primarily expressive: metaphors, especially – conceptual metaphors, definitions, including applications, epithets, etc.) by frame actants and slots. In particular, it is shown that the image of a cat is formed by three meaningful dominants (concepts): love-friendship (as an indissoluble unity) (hence the image of communication happiness), orphanhood and doing good. The latter corresponds to the dominant of the volunteer discourse. Of the two remaining, orphanhood is well combined with it (the targeting of doing good is emphasized), but the latter rather contradicts it (it is more likely mutually beneficial cooperation, even exchange, than disinterested service) and can probably be explained by the focus on the diversity of reaching a heterogeneous audience, where the motives to take a cat from a shelter can also be different.

From hooligans to thrash talk: Evolution of the genre

The article deals with the thrash talk as a speech genre. The term, which came to modern Russian from English, refers to a speech practice in which offensive statements are formulated against the opponent, designed to disturb the opponent’s psychological equanimity. It can be a form of bragging or insulting in competitive situations. The research was conducted in the context of Russian and foreign works on invective practice in Russian linguoculture, which not only represent a constant, but evolve as well. Such problems as the correlation between national-specific and universal aspects, linguistic and extralinguistic aspects, development of new phenomena on a national basis and borrowings are taken into account. Thrash-talk, if we use this term in a narrow sense, is autochthonous for Russian linguoculture. The methodology of the study is based on the comparison the description of speech practice with the standard. For our purposes we have formulated the standards “accusation”, “humiliation” and “hyperidenticity”, the components of the description of which were linguistic and psychological features. Thus, we can say that our research is carried out within the paradigm of psycholinguistics. This is justified by the fact that thrash talk balances on the edge of language and psyche. As a result of the comparison procedure we can conclude that there is a correspondence or discrepancy between these descriptions. The basis of our research were open Internet sources that contain examples of thrash talk as an element of characters’ speech behavior in texts or videos. As a result of the study it was possible to describe and systematize speech goals – persuasion and demonstration, the use of figurative, stylistically marked, expressively colored language means, psychological manipulative means of inducement and threat. In conclusion the article outlines the prospects for research related to such genres as flaming, flying, sledging, wolf-whistling, cat-calling, street-harassment, etc.

Speech portrait of O. Mandelstam (On the methodology of philological evaluation of poetic idiolect)

The article develops an algorithm of philological evaluation of a poetic idiolect, determines the components of the language competence of its carrier; on this basis presents the speech portrait of O. Mandelstam in the context of modern Russian poetry. The study shows that the linguistic competence of the poetic idiolect carrier is represented by two components: 1) speech culture competence, the level of which is inversely dependent with respect to the number of a) the orthological ans stylistic mistakes made by them; b) their types and subtypes; 2) elocutive competence, the level of which is determined by the number of stylistic techniques used by them. The evaluation of the speech culture competence is possible on the basis of a general typology of speech errors; for this purpose, a list of typical for modern poetic speech errors and shortcomings is compiled: if these errors and shortcomings regularly appear in the author’s texts, this indicates that he has problems in this area. The proposed test allows to identify poets with impeccable cultural competence and those whose competence leaves much to be desired. The evaluation of the elocutive competence is made on the basis of the general typology of figures (including rhythmic ones) and semantic transfers. One of the most significant criteria for evaluating elocutive competence is an ability to produce new stylistic techniques and speech genres, i. e. its creative component, in this aspect O. Mandelstam appears as a creator of at least two speech genres that have become a familiar attribute of modern Russian poetry: 1) an acromonosyllabic verse with a terminal spondaic caesura; 2) a free dolnik formed through the procedure of secondary verse division.

Ironical edification

The paper deals with ironic edification – autosemantic utterances which contain critical evaluation of human shortcomings expressed in derisive assertion of absurd, or pretentious, or malicious behavior certain people manifest. They make a specific class of proverbs, aphorisms, and miniatures of modern network discourse. They are heterogeneous and vary from profound observations of human character up to banalities used to amuse a down-home partner, from witty phrases up to acid black humour. They are very common in everyday conversations and serve to help interlocutors express their understanding of hidden manipulations they are exposed to. Structurally they may be simple and composite, the former are integral sentences expressing a certain attitude to norms of behavior, the latter are judgments which consist of two parts, in the first part a certain positive norm of behavior is expressed, and in the second part it is denied. Their integral semantic content is a frame which expresses a concessive juxtaposition of values, pragmatically they promote important assumptions about realistic evaluation of human nature, and their most relevant syntactic feature is a ludic allusion to well-known texts or events.

Speech genre of an expert report in the context of communicative goal-setting

The article studies a speech genre of an expert report. The study focuses on the realization of the most significant genre-forming feature – the communicative goal of an expert report. Scientific novelty is connected with the fact that an expert report is studied in the context of being a result of speech activity; within the theory of speech genres and communicative linguistics. The article focuses on the basic characteristics of the genre, its communicative goal-setting peculiarities, and the influence of an expert report type on the communicative goal realization. The analysis shows that the speech genre of an expert report is included into the terminological and actual boundaries of a wider and larger phenomenon, known as a speech event, which is realized by a set of speech genres and represents a form of organization of communication with certain participants. As a speech event, an expert report possesses a complex ritualized nature which makes it possible to define it as a complex speech event. The article studies the speech genre of an expert report as a leading genre of a speech event with the same name. The analysis has found out a dual trend of an expert report in communicative goal-setting, represented by: 1) information communication (informative objective) and 2) evaluation expression (evaluative objective). The balance between the two objectives is determined by an expert report type. Expert reports of traditional (special-purpose) type are found to appeal to consciousness and logic with the informative illocution being a predominant goal; while in case of humanitarian expert reports, subjective emotional experience and assessment serve the same purpose being applied in practice in the dominating evaluative illocution.

Semantic-pragmatic potential of reports of refusal of communication in the roman of E. Vodolazkin “Lavr”

The semantic and pragmatic potential of statements of refusal to communicate allows shedding light on the peculiarities of the phenomenon of silence, identifying its varieties, the specifics of manifestation in the Russian linguistic picture of the world and analyzing the functionality as part of a literary text. The concept of “refusal to communicate” is a broader phenomenon than the actual speech genre of refusal, since refusal as such implies a negative reaction only to initial motivational responses, while refusal of communication can become both a reaction to any statement or not be reactive at all, that is, to be the initial remark in the dialogue. The peculiarity of statements with the semantics of silence is manifested in the fact that their illocutionary goal is the impossibility or unwillingness to continue communication and is achieved using various linguistic means, first of all, lexemes denoting the speaking process, as well as modal modifiers expressing the reason for such speech behavior. The differences between speech genres, which are based on rejection, lie in the very object of rejection, in what the speaker rejects. In the Russian linguistic picture of the world, silence is characterized by the fact that it is a communicative action, it consists not in the absence of speech, but in the transmission of information in a non-verbal way. In this case, it is called communicatively meaningful silence. The analysis of the lexical structure of E. Vodolazkin’s novel “Laure” made it possible to identify important fragments of the text associated with silence, to obtain information about the author’s worldview and his attitude to the phenomenon of silence.

Structural and pragmatic aspects of the speech genre “treating to a meal”

The article deals with the colloquial speech genre of “home” communication “treating to a meal”. The relevance of this research is determined by the general interest of modern linguistics to colloquial speech and genre studies. The research is based on the analysis of spoken discourse fragments recorded in natural conditions (most of the fragments were collected by the method of participant observation). The author makes the following conclusions about the genre “treating to a meal”: the genre is used during the meals while receiving guests (the addressor is a host, the addressee – a guest, or guests) and during the meal of people living together (the addresser is often the one who does the cooking, the addressee – other household members); the genre has some gender peculiarities; “treating to a meal” is partially an etiquette genre, since its super-goal is to maintain contact and it is prompted by the role of the host or hostess in the house and by the situation of “eating together”. The author also focuses on the use of syntactic constructions. The basis of the sentences used in this genre are event propositions of physical action in the form of a structural scheme N4Vf.

‘n most…’: Internet rating as a speech genre

The research is focused on the genre of Internet rating (an article representing a group of homogeneous objects in the form of a ranked, most often numbered list) and is based on approx. 600 texts of Internet rankings (2019–2020) from approx. 120 sites. The article analyzes the following characteristics of the Internet rating: general speech-genre, structural, thematic (thematic areas, key lexemes, semantics and pragmatics), evaluative (ranking principles, author’s subjectivity, values) ones. A lot of attention is paid to such speech-genre dominants of the Internet rating as the principles of assessment / ranking, author’s subjectivity, expression, as well as some factors of cultural borrowing (“ratingness”). Three parts of the Internet rating structure have been identified: 1) the heading, which the content aggregator brings to the news browser; 2) a description of the Internet rating; 3) the ranked objects themselves. The article singles out and describes the linguistic markers of the Internet rating genre and its main structural types, as well as the most common topics of Internet ratings: cinema (TV shows, cartoons, anime), books / writers, signs of the Zodiac, the world of cats and dogs, tourism; the most common numbers (10, 5, no number, 3, 7, 1, 6, 4, 20); illocutionary types of Internet ratings (entertaining ones prevail, among non-entertaining ones advice and (presumably) hidden advertising stand out) / The author offers their quantitative indicators as well. The article analyzes the principles of ranking objects of Internet ratings and their relationship with the image of the author and addressee of the Internet rating. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the author tries, on the one hand, to prove the objectivity of the rating (to refer to the conducted research, survey, authoritative opinion, etc.), on the other hand, to explicate their subjectivity (for example, to encourage readers to express their own opinions).

Network communication and its genres as objects of artistic representation (based on Russian literature)

The article analyses a new compositional peculiarity of modern fiction – the introduction of a text fragment related by its lexical and graphic features to one of the genres of network communication (chat, blog, electronic mail, etc.) into the structure of the literary works. The dialogue between characters, who communicate on the Net, becomes one of the stable text-forming means, performing various artistic tasks, including formation of the plotline, creating the image (atmosphere) of the time period, character images, reflection of “language taste of the epoch”, and so on. The reproduction of the main linguistic peculiarities of electronic genres, in its turn, enlivens the literary discourse to a considerable degree; the pastiche of network communication becomes one of the expressive means; the cultural dominant of our time – orientation towards visual perception of information – manifests itself. The research has revealed methods and means of transferring graphic and lexical features of genres of informal network communication in the fictional text. The main ways of reflecting the peculiarities of electronic speech are direct stylization (reproduction of alphabetic and other graphemes used in Runet) and indirect image (verbal designation of non-alphabetic graphemes), which becomes the basis of a new imagery, the tropics (laughing brackets, emoji got nervous, an offended smiley, etc.). The analysis of the features of the display of speech behavior on the Net allows to conclude about the formation of a kind of poetics for the artistic embodiment of the stable theme of modern literature – ”Man in the virtual sphere of communication and being”. The study is built on the basis of general philological analysis and specifically linguistic analysis of a fictional text (total number of analyzed works is about 60) and presents a part of the author’s separate research on the formation of Russian Internet lexis in the modern Russian language and realized within the framework of functional sociolinguistics.