Linguistics

The article off ers the development of the complex methodology for the study of the speech behavior of the intelligentsia characters. The material of the research is the plays and screenplays of the 60–80s of the 20th century by the Soviet authors such as Valentin Azernikov, Alexei Arbuzov, Vladimir Arro, Emil Braginsky and Eldar Ryazanov, Alexander Vampilov, Alexander Volodin and Leonid Zorin, and others. The article considers methodological approaches to the study of the speech behavior of literary characters belonging to the same social group.

The article considers the communicative category of politeness and defi nes the role of this category in the process of professional doctor-patient communication. The category of politeness functions in the form of speech etiquette and is obligatory in doctor-patient conversations. The authors have analyzed the means of realization of speech etiquette and politeness in situations of professional medical communication, and determined those which are most frequently used in strategies of medical discourse.

The Russian language of the second and third decades of the twentieth century is undergoing signifi cant changes. In the modern digital world, the media is losing its position as the most infl uential sphere of communication, giving way to social networks that are far from normative. The monitoring of the state of modern speech (colloquial, mass media, scientifi c, business, artistic) carried out by the authors of this article shows that a number of changes are taking place in it. Notional parts of speech regularly undergo semantic and stylistic transformations.

The article analyzes the main defi nitions of the concept of „language norm“ by domestic and foreign linguists of the early 20–21st centuries. Thus, the dichotomy of F. de Saussure “language” and “speech” is considered, on the basis of which most studies of the concept of “norm” were built. The defi nitions of the norm given by E. Coseriu, representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle are analyzed. The social and dynamic nature of the language norm is revealed in the defi nitions of Russian scientists: A. M. Peshkovsky, S. I. Ozhegov, D. N. Ushakov and V. I. Dal, L. V.

The article considers the comparative analysis of the articulation-acoustic characteristics of the vocalism of the modern English and Russian languages (on the examples of the scientifi c discourse), taking into account combinatorial and positional changes that aff ect the characteristics of unstressed vocalism, a number of typical modifi cations in the timbre, temporal, dynamic and tonal characteristics of unstressed languages are identifi ed.

The article contains a comparative analysis of legal terms in the British and American variants of the English language. The author points out that the British term is understood as the one belonging to the law of England and Wales since Scotland and Northern Ireland have a diff erent law system. The article contains a classifi cation of legal terms based on the absence or presence of diff erences between the British and American variants, as well as the character of diff erences.

Current research studies the concept of “gender” as one of the social factors that determine the choice of language means defi ned as more typical for female or male speech. The study focuses on the speech of Theresa May, the former British Prime Minister, the second female Prime Minister after M. Thatcher. The analysis of 10 interviews with male and female journalists is based on the classifi cations of masculine and feminine language means described in the studies of such linguists as R. Lakoff , a representative of feminist criticism of language, W. O’Barr and B.

The article examines the changes that have occurred in family-related communication. The research is based on family speech handwritten notes and transcripts of voice records made by the author and the students of her special seminar, correspondence of family members and relatives in various messengers, as well as on the speech material presented in articles and books published by various researchers.

The second half of the last century is characterized by an increased interest in the literature of Ancient and Medieval Russia. Since the 40s, a large number of fundamental studies dedicated to various works before the time of Peter the Great have appeared. This attention was accompanied by a more thorough study of the Church Slavonic language itself: its spelling, morphology and, of course, vocabulary, as evidenced by the work begun in the 70s on compiling a dictionary of the Russian language of the 11–17th centuries.

The article deals with the dialectal vocabulary of Russian dialects on the territory of the Middle Volga region. The author relies on new materials collected in the regional atlas and dictionary. The article provides the facts that the sources reflect the uneven development of dialect lexical systems, in which, on the one hand, under the influence of standardization and inter-dialectal contact, new words appear and, on the other hand, archaisms are preserved.