Heart-to-heart Talk in the System of Values of Russian Speech Communication

Abstract

This article considers heart-to-heart talk (Rus. разговор по душам), a genre of harmonious communication belonging to the informal sphere of immediate oral spontaneous communication mostly aimed at establishing or strengthening interpersonal intimacy, moral support, and the exchange of important personal information. The author provides linguo-communicative (speech genre), linguocultural, linguo-cognitive (value), and linguo-statistical (corpus) analysis of the genre, which is regarded as a genre of communication and speech with no equivalents in other cultures, a scenario and value of Russian speech communication and Russian culture as a whole. Analysis of the genre reveals its significant complexity and inconsistency, including value inconsistency: heart-to-heart talk can be “simple” – and beyond someone’s capacity to understand; with an “simple” interlocutor – and a highly educated specialist; with “one’s own” – and with a stranger; it can be short – and long; relaxed, “light” – and tense, “hard”; it can be pleasant, “partial”, and include elements of flattery – and harsh criticism; it can lead to reconciliation – and to a quarrel; it can be calm – and include elements of a dispute (razgovor po dusham between men) or hysterics (between women); usually a heart-to-heart talk cannot take place “on demand”. Razgovor po dusham is regarded positively when conducted (successfully) by psychologists with mentally ill or unstable people. In the majority of cases, the evaluative characteristics of the razgovor po dusham reflected in the examples are positive and highly positive; at the same time, there are negative characteristics. The article takes into account studies of cultural concepts in the Russian national and linguistic worldview (“душа” soul, “правда” truth, “дружба” friendship, “искренность” sincerity, “тоска” longing, etc.) and complements the picture with a number of important concepts, associated with the communicative-pragmatic and genrerole nature of the phenomenon, and with the peculiarities of paradigmatics and syntagmatics in the contexts of modern Russian speech.