Communicative Category of Alterity: Linguocultural and Linguoecological Properties

Abstract

The aim of the article is to give an in-depth insight into alterity as a communication category in the cognitive and discursive aspects. Being an indispensable part of communication and cognition, the category has its own meaning presenting the communicative interaction within the frame "I – the Other". The category of alterity has its own set of category properties, which are specified uniquely in different languages. Alterity as a linguistic category may express an outlook on the reality (similar, i.e. familiar, devoid of risk: other, different, vague, evidently evoking fear or curiosity). In the Russian language, it is linked to the emotional clusters of curiosity, fear, suspense, whereas in the English language it is associated with curiosity, admiration, surprise and novice. Alterity is characterized similarly in English and Russian through maintaining such features as dissimilarity, variety, multifariousness, belonging to different classes/groups, distinct opposition. As well as common features, alterity manifests culturally specific meanings in English (being eccentric, revolutionary, new, fresh) and Russian (being funny and incongruous). The article includes a description of the linguistic means and communicative strategies and tactics, with the help of which the category of alterity is realized in fiction. The category content is variable in the discourse and it serves ground for the ecological and non-ecological mode of communication.