Linguistic and cultural foundations of verbal aggression in the Russian language

Abstract

The relevance of the research is determined by the insufficient study of the forms of aggression in the context of culture, as well as insufficient description of the extralinguistic prerequisites of aggression correlated with the subject area of culture, and intra-linguistic means and methods of cultural reference of aggression. The aim of the study is to identify the linguistic and cultural foundations of expressing aggression in the Russian language and to describe the means of its verbalization through the prism of the binary category “Own/ Other”, which is the basis of ethnic conflicts. To achieve this aim, the method of definitional, semantic, linguistic-cultural analysis, descriptive method was used. A sociolinguistic experiment was conducted. Methods of continuous sampling from lexicographic sources and of quantitative calculations of the responses received by the participants of the experiment were applied. The research material included: 1) a corpus of more than 50 lexical and phraseological units of the Russian language taken from dictionaries, which verbalize aggressive attitude towards “foreign” culture and “foreign” ethnos; 2) a range of ethnopholisms obtained in the sociolinguistic experiment among high school students in Astrakhan. It was determined that aggression in the Russian language has a culturological explanation: it is conditioned by identifying the ethnos according to the principle of “own - other”. The linguistic and cultural basis of aggressive semantics is the semantics of “alienness”, which is expressed by demonstrating an obviously negative attitude to “alien”, which is the object of an aggressive action. A special group of lexical means - linguistic and cultural markers of aggression - includes units, negatively characterizing representatives/artifacts of a “foreign” culture. Linguistic and cultural markers of aggression are ethnopholisms. Aggressive nominations of ethnic groups historically residing both far abroad and in the Russian multicultural region are equally relevant in the linguistic consciousness of young people. From extralinguistic positions, the consolidation and activation of hostile lexico-phraseological means in the language are conditioned by the intercultural historical contacts of nations which are currently being reflected in the journalistic discourse, in Internet communication. The perspective of the research is seen in the use of its results for developing the concept of overcoming speech aggression in the educational space, where the factor of hostility has hindered the education of a tolerant personality.