Iconic manifestation of interlocutor distance in Russian

Abstract

Assuming that every utterance has some sort of syntactic ‘deep structure’, data from Colloquial Russian suggest that a restrained interlocutor relationship results, iconically, in a ‘grammar of restraint’, the ‘grammar of closeness’, on the contrary, operates as a creative superstructure above the well-established and obligatory ‘grammar of restraint’. An alternative solution would be to posit two different sub-grammars: (a) an analytic and explicit ‘grammar of restraint’, generating primarily hypotactic structures, and (b) an undifferentiated ‘grammar of closeness’, generating primarily paratactic structures. Whichever approach one takes, the data show that the speaker's perception of interlocutor distance is systematically encoded in the language. The grammar of closeness, in general, tends to be used more by females than males, who favor the grammar of restraint, on which modern linguistics is based. Insofar as grammars of restraint are closely tied to propositional semantics, they have hitherto provided ample material for research, while the paratactic and synthetic grammars of closeness have largely remained outside the mainstream of research in modern linguistics. Future research on the grammar of closeness may eventually help to clarify certain inequities in the theory and practice of linguistics that may have arisen because of the traditional focus on the grammar of restraint.