Toxic Communication Zones and Emotive Markers in the Russian-Language Work Environment

Abstract

The paper addresses the problems of toxic communications in the workplace and considers lexical and grammatical means of expressing emotions. The material for the study was former workers' comments and anonymous questionnaires completed by current employees of Russian enterprises. Based on empirical data processed under Fisher's angular transformation method, which enabled highly accurate comparison of small samples, three toxic communication zones in industry were identified: the zones of toxic bosses, toxic management, and toxic workers. The authors performed a Likert scale survey of executives, managers, and workers. The results of single-factor and two-factor analysis of variance helped us to establish the relation between toxic communication and so-called toxicity focuses, that is, standard topics which are constantly in the centre of destructive communications in the workplace. The paper determines lexical and grammatical means of expressing emotions which are emotive markers of toxic communication (affectives and connotatives). It shows that abusive words and phrases, zoolexics, vernacular and slang vocabulary, colloquial emotionally colored vocabulary, and phraseological units are equally relevant for all three zones of toxic communication zones. Quantitative analysis of the identified emotive markers in terms of their structural and morphological characteristics revealed the abundance of interjections, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs of degree and intensity.