This study explores the impact of an intellectual style on metadiscourse choices made by Russian academic writers. The article aims to investigate the influence of the Teutonic intellectual style on metadiscourse patterns in theoretical and applied linguistic research article introductions written by Russian linguists. The analysis, based on J. Galtung’s model of intellectual styles, examines 120 academic texts. The results of the study showed that Russian academic prose, often associated with Teutonic influence, is characterized by a high frequency of intensifiers and a significant presence of hedging and relational markers. However, self-reference markers are rare and appear mostly in the form of the first-person plural pronouns, regardless of whether the author is single or multiple. No involvement markers were found in the corpus. The conclusion is that although the Teutonic intellectual style plays a certain role, it is not decisive for the rhetorical choices of Russian academic writers. The influence of international academic writing traditions, particularly those based on the Saxon intellectual style, seems evident in the use of hedge markers and relational markers that promote closer interaction with the reader. The study suggests that the categorization of the Russian academic discourse as exclusively that of Teutonic intellectual style requires further research with a larger corpus. Further research prospects may include the analysis of metadiscourse patterns in other disciplines, diachronic variations in the metadiscourse of different authors, and other categories of metadiscourse features in academic prose. 

 Linguistic conflictology is a branch of pragmatics that focuses on aggressive speech behavior patterns. This research featured provocative reports about figure skating and online comments as response. This conflictogenic area provides an iconic case study that makes it possible to trace a conflict through all its stages, i.e., origin, course, and escalation. To profile the aggressive online verbal behavior of sports fans, the authors classified their comments by the provocative stimulus and then graded the stimuli by the efficiency of provocation. To establish the speech means and stylistic devices of negative response, they applied multimodal discourse, contextual, and content analyses, as well as the methods of classification and statistics. The resulting classification of aggressive comments depending on the stimulus and its degree of provocativeness was supplemented with a list of linguistic means of negative emotional response. The list of text elements bound to evoke negative comments included: structural components (headlines, leads, images, etc.); semantic blocks about skaters and coaches provided with the author’s subjective assessments; linguistic techniques (generalization, negative intensification, escalation, belittling, etc.); names of the journalist(s) and the media responsible for the publication. 

Proper and common nouns unfold their discursive qualities in the discourse of the interpreter, i.e., the receiver of the message. Interpretive linguistics casts light upon the receptive speech and the interpretative potential of those lexical units that it actualizes. As the focus shifts from nouns as a grammatical class of words or communication means to nouns as objects of speech-thinking interpretation, the discursive characteristics of proper and common nouns manifest as activators of the receiver’s dialogical discourse. In this regard, proper and common names actualize various cognitive models as ways of objectifying the discursive semantics of nouns in the interpretative activity of the message receiver. In a discursive experiment, respondents were asked to finish a sentence in a dialogue, where proper and common nouns actualized the dialogical discourse. Based on 486 reactions, both proper and common nouns proved able to deploy the communicative discourse, but in a different way. As the interpretation process unfolded, proper and common nouns activated different areas of cognitive activity. Completing a dialogue with a common noun activated the cognitive areas associated with background knowledge, events, and evaluation, but the area of attribution remained uninvolved. When the dialogue was completed with a proper name, it activated the areas of background knowledge, events, evaluation, and attribution. The formation and actualization mechanism associated with onyms were practically identical to the communicative fragments actualized by common nouns. 

Low temperature is a functional and semantic concept of the Yakut language. The article introduces an attempt at a functional-semantic and cognitive analysis of adjectival nominations with temperature connotations aimed at identification, description, and systematization of components involved in low temperature semantics in the Yakut language. The concept of cold is inherent with the geocultural image of Yakutia, and its linguistic representations are popular in the speech of native Yakuts. The lexical content of the word tymnyy made it possible to describe the conceptualization of the idea of cold in the Yakut language worldview. The archiseme of having a cold temperature included the following semes: being in the cold; cooling, giving off cold or cold air; having cold; cooled down; not heated or insulated; not warming; not protecting from the cold; related to the North Pole; giving somebody a cold treatment. The process of temperature perception revealed the differences between the mechanisms of cognitive reflection and the principles of metaphorical transfer. As a nominative, tymnyy could combine with various lexical and semantic groups of verbs, i.e., existential verbs of causation, verbs of destructive physical impact, with verbs of strengthening or weakening the intensity of action, and verbs of emotional state. The nominative became an adverb with the help of some case and adverbial affixes, functioning as an adverb of manner (with verbs of relationship and interaction), place, time, cause and effect (with psycho-emotional verbs), spaciotemporal relations (with verbs of action and state), etc. 

Russian spoken charms represent a unique genre of traditional verbal folklore with its own remarkable polycoded structure. The issue belongs to a wide circle of contemporary linguistic problematics, which includes cultural linguistics, multimodal communication, polycoded texts, verbal semiotics, performative language, speech influence, and the discourse vs. text dilemma. The authors applied the method of systemic description to Russian spoken charms to identify and describe their polycoded structure, as well as their lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic  verbal code, non-verbal code patterns, and major cultural codes in their interaction. A combination of discursive, semiotic, linguistic, and pragmatic analyses was applied to 1,800 charms from 17th – early 20th centuries. A spoken charm proved to be an integrative system of intertwined verbal formulae, ritual actions, and cultural background. It owed its holistic multimodal effect to the specific features of each code and the mechanisms of their synergy. The polycoded nature of the Russian spoken charm proved to be the key to its adequate interpretation. 

 The cumulative effect in culture is a mechanism that protects traditional elements from sociocultural changes. To analyze the stability of archaic forms within cultural dynamics, the author developed a methodological model for analyzing the cumulative effect. The research revealed the structure, functions, and types of survivals in the Old Germanic culture. Methodologically, the research relied on the theory of cultural survivals (E. B. Tylor), the concept of syncretism (A. Ya. Gurevich, G. Dumézil), the theory of cultural memory (J. Assmann), the meme theory (R. Dawkins), and cultural semiotics (Yu. M. Lotman). A complex of textual,  historical, cultural, and linguistic analyses was combined with the semiotic method and the comparative historical method to be applied to Old Germanic texts. The experiment revealed five structural and functional characteristics of the cumulative effect: temporality (liminality and continuity), spatiality (preservation of sacred space and topological continuity), mechanisms of effect (ritualism and oral tradition formulae), mechanisms of transformation (synthesis of old and new and adaptation of images), and consequences (cultural continuity and complication of concepts). The model could be applied to other cultures with their transitional periods and survivals. The new tool for studying cultural code shifts contributes to the theory of cultural evolution. 

The article proposes a new methodology for trend analysis of semantic and grammatic connections. The case study featured Russian verbs of mental activity dumat (to think) and vspominat (to remember) in the associative-verbal network of teenage native Russian speakers from the city of Omsk. The research was part of a larger project aimed at modelling the subjective semantics of lexemes of different grammatical classes in the consciousness of native Russian speakers of different ages. As psycholinguistics sees word semantics as something unique for each native speaker, the goal was to test subjective semantics and grammar for stability and variability in the associative-verbal network of teenagers (12–14 y.o., Omsk residents). The results of the free associative experiment were compared with those obtained from respondents of the same age in 2003. While some connections in the associative-verbal network proved to have changed over time, a stable core area persisted, e.g., the semantic connections with reactive infinitives or objects expressed by a noun in an indirect case. The latter grew more frequent in the experiment of 2023, which also revealed more overlaps between reactions to the two verbs, indicating an increase in the similarity of subjective semantic areas in the linguistic consciousness of Omsk teenagers.

If free associative experiments are separated in time, they require a separate methodology. Previous results mean an opportunity for a trend study, provided that the first experiment is replicated under the same conditions and with similar subjects in terms of age and gender. The quantitative analysis of experimental data needs an efficient method of semantic analysis to process the reactions and associative fields. The author developed and tested a new methodology for analyzing the same-name associative fields based on two associative experiments (2002 and 2022). To obtain a reliable trend study, the second experiment recreated the conditions of the first one, i.e., stimuli (112 words), subjects (500 people), written form, etc. A. A. Grigoriev and M. S. Klenskaya’s methodology for quantitative assessment of associative fields made it possible to analyze the same-name associative fields separated in time. The qualitative analysis involved Yu. N. Karaulov’s semantic gestalt methodology, which yielded a semantic field model based on the same-name reactions with a distinct core periphery structure. It was modified by using the quantitative method for relative frequencies of both individual reactions and gestalt zones, i.e., semantic classes.

A frequency vocabulary helps to understand the artistic world and poetics of the author. This article introduces Osip Mandelstam’s frequency vocabulary compiled from his collection of poetry Stone (1913). The new research methodology made it possible to analyze the semantic classes of vocabulary in the poetic texts based on their volume, i.e., their significance for that period in Mandelstam’s oeuvre. The lemmas and semantic classes were compiled using a system of automatic text processing and categorized based on fundamental motives identified by literary scholars in Mandelstam’s poetry. According to the volumes of semantic classes, subclasses, and their relationships, the SHAPE class proved to be the core semantic class. This class had direct or indirect connections with other classes in the pre-core zone, namely human, existence, nature, movement, and sensory perception. The high occurrence of the SHAPE class and its relationship with other classes illustrated the significance and variability of the idea of form and shape in the verse. It was expressed not only by naming objects but also through natural phenomena, human body, movement, and sound. Stone’s key pathos was to give shape to initially shapeless objects and fill in the void. In this respect, the collection was a manifesto of Acmeism, which opposed the poetic shapelessness of Symbolism.

Some current trends in the current Russia’s linguistic status seem to threaten its cultural code. This research relied on the descriptive and interpretative methods, as well as the method of discourse analysis. The transformation technique consisted in replacing some components of phrases from advertising or mass media with their alternatives in order to clarify the gains or losses from the perspectives of the effect of vocabulary on the axiological worldview. While being an instrument of thinking, the language cannot but corrects it, imposing the targeted understanding of the laws of nature and society. The values of culture formed by Russian classical literature are in fact moral values; advertising and mass media manipulate its resources to change the national cultural codes. Their most popular manipulative strategies are based on a deceptive appeal to the basic cultural concepts. The speech representatives of key cultural concepts serve as a positive connotative umbrella for the neighboring nominations. Anglicization is another dangerous trend: Russian speakers prefer a foreign word from a pragmatic chain of synonyms or antonyms. This phenomenon also threatens the cultural continuity in the development of the national language. In addition, the unprecedented spread of obscene language marks the degradation of the public morals.

The influence that a foreign language exercises on a national language can be calculated mathematically. The author developed a special index for assessing the vulnerability of a national language to foreign borrowings to provide the government bodies responsible for the state language policy with scientifically substantiated data. The index consists of three functional groups of parameters: social and value regulation (law, state control, education), media (culture, leisure, information, mass media), and external influence. These parameters cover the areas of public life that legitimize foreign borrowings in the national language. Due to their informative and psychological impact on the population during leisure activities, media parameters seem especially effective in promoting foreign borrowings as they consolidate linguistic behavior patterns in the society. The universal applicability of the media group parameters was verified in a case study of English borrowings in the Indonesian language.

The article traces the terms cherta (dash) and chertochka (small dash; hyphen) and their semantics in the system of the Russian linguistic terminology. As the Russian graphics of the 9th–18th centuries remain understudied, so does the lexical status of dash and hyphen with their semantic and functional differences. Starting with their first mention in lexicographic sources, these two punctuation marks developed complex and interconnected systems of meanings. This fact opens a possibility of an unconventional semantic interpretation, determined by their functional potential. The author traced the semantics of cherta (dash) and chertochka (hyphen) in the Russian language in the 9th–18th centuries to specify their terminological status and identify their functional features. The study relied on the methods of historical, linguistic, definitional, and semantic analyses. Based on the available grammatical treatises, grammars, and dictionaries, cherta and chertochka evolved from the common language vocabulary to linguistic terms due to the functions they performed. Modern general and terminological dictionaries identify chertochka with the orthographic term hyphen. Despite its obvious terminological status, cherta remains outside specialized dictionaries because of its broad semantics. However, cherta, like chertochka, can be considered a term, at least in the historical-linguistic aspect. In the 9th–18th centuries, the term cherta had twelve meanings, each of which received its verbal designation not only through the term itself, but also due to a number of synonymous terms. Most of these meanings dated back to the 18th century, which saw the genesis of Russian linguistics and the first Russian grammars. The earliest meaning of the term goes back to the 9th century, when it denoted a special type of writing of the ancient Slavs (cherty and rezy, i.e., carved strokes). The semantic structure of the term chertochka included five meanings, which shaped in the second half of the 18th century. All of them correlated with the semantic structure of cherta. Based on the range of meanings and functional spheres, chertochka had a narrower use than cherta.

The article introduces a new methodology of semasiological analysis. The method traces lexical-semantic groups for changes in their nuclear semes by exploiting the dynamics of semantic changes at the level of elementary semantic components, which further affects the conceptual profile of the word. Semantic reconstruction is the first step to understanding the semantic route that a linguistic borrowing follows from its first records through all its adaptations. The authors constructed a methodological frame for a comprehensive semasiological analysis of English-language borrowings using the word park that entered the Russian language during the reign of Peter the Great. The method took into account such parameters as frequency and prevalence; it proved effective in explicating the adaptation processes through the external semantic reconstruction of the word and its typology. The word park entered the Russian language system in the first half of the 18th century. Its reconstruction was described in this article stage by stage. First, the authors compared the meanings of the original word park with the semantic composition of the borrowed word park to determine its semantic volume and function range during the early adaptation. The nuclear semes of the lexical-semantic group of the borrowed word and its English language etymon demonstrated a certain discrepancy between the original and borrowed meanings. Second, the authors traced the semantic development in dynamics. As the semantic emphasis shifted from the nuclear component of the original lexical-semantic group to the clarifying component in the borrowed word, it triggered a change in the conceptual basis of the borrowed word. The component analysis of the borrowing was supplemented with contextual examples from the Petrine era in order to prevent distorted perception and asynchrony.

Anatoly Shteiger (1907–1944) was a Russian poet of the first wave of Russian emigration, whose poetry expressed the aesthetics of the Parisian Note. This émigré literary movement sought to preserve the viability of Russian poetry amidst the pan-European spiritual crisis by making it more intimate. Shteiger applied a diary strategy to his last collections of verses Ingratitude and 2 × 2 = 4, where he overcame the monology of consciousness. The ego- and literary-centrism of his early poetry gave way to dialogue as a means of integration into the contemporary socio-cultural reality. Shteiger’s diary strategy evolved together with his personal and creative development as self-observation turned into a way of world cognition, and the formal features of diary entries became artistic devices. The figure of the Other affected the subjective organization of the lyrics, resulting in a lyrical us-voice, a lyrical personage, a certain subjective syncretism, and an explicit addressee figure. The themes of the pursuit of happiness, mutual understanding, flesh-and-spirit relations, and purposeful creativity reflected the biographical and cultural context. In Shteiger’s last poetic collections, the diary perspective was the fundamental principle of artistic world modeling while the diary poetics was the method for selecting and organizing empirical material.

As the matters of ethnic self-identity and cultural heritage of indigenous peoples grow in relevance, they trigger scientific interest to ethnic literature. This article focuses on the poetic image of a horse in the verses by the Shorian poet Tatyana Tudegesheva. This animalistic image is inherent to the culture of the Shors, a small numbered ingenious people from the south of the Kemerovo Region. Her second collection of Russian-language verses Sky Flight of Nine-Eyed Arrows (2007) focuses on the equine image, which appears in 15 from 110 poems across all five parts of the book. It accompanies the images of arrows and riders, which are typical of Tudegesheva’s idiostyle. According to the contextual stylistic analysis, the equine image contains the following explicit and implicit senses: destiny of the Shors and other Turkic peoples, war and death, nostalgy and memories of the past, love, creative writing, sense of life, human nature, family. A horse symbolizes power, will, rapid movement towards a set goal, and freedom. The equine image develops in various registers: as a part of historical heroic epos; as a psychological and autopsychological detail; as a philosophical reflection to nature, death, and time; as a mystical, magical, and mythological image.

The image of Alexander Pushkin in Russian literature is an independent and relevant research topic. This article traces its evolution across one hundred years of Russian drama (1899–1999) through the biographical myth and its mythologemes. The comparative historical method made it possible to assess the contributions made by different playwrights to Pushkin’s biographical myth. The image of Pushkin acquired different interpretations in different epochs, from the mythological sacralization through the Soviet drama and to demythologization. While using the same mythologemes, the playwrights selected different biographical facts and adapted them to the schemes established in the contemporary mass consciousness. The Pushkin myth in drama revealed some chronological invariants. The Soviet and Perestroika plays focused on the topic of heritage and descendants. Over the course of a century, the image of Pushkin turned from an archetypal poet-demiurge and victim of the crowd to a fighter for the freedom of speech, only to be stereotyped and desacralized in the late 20th century.

Preface is the most popular type of paratext. This article focuses on the content and form of prefaces to retellings of Shakespeare’s plays for children published in the 19th–21st centuries. A set of descriptive, cultural historical, comparative-historical, historical-genetic, and formal methods made it possible to trace the evolution of prefaces to Shakespear retellings for children as a literary tradition. The list of constants included: appeal for teaching children to read, Shakespeare’s place in English and English-speaking culture, reasons for retellings, and adaptation techniques. The modifications of the genre were determined by the profound changes in the European culture in general and in pedagogy in particular. Gradually, the prefaces have acquired a new addressee: while the earliest prefaces addressed the parents, the modern ones appeal to the young readers themselves.