ON LINGUISTIC TECHNIQUES OF ADAPTING OPINIONS

ON LINGUISTIC TECHNIQUES OF ADAPTING OPINIONS

Author:  V.Z. Demyankov

Affiliation:  Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract:  There are at least two cognitive dimensions of adapting discourses to human environment: (a) adapting the form and the content of discourses themselves as a sort of goods, so that they can successfully function on the market of competitive commodities, and (b) propagating opinions and attitudes of the target audience, propelling or reducing the activity of competitors. The latter kind consists in disseminating and/or in discrediting opinions.
Hedging of propositions belongs to the first dimension. Socratic dialogues are an instance of the second kind, when different ways of intellectual provocation help to explain certain philosophically relevant ideas. “Teutonic” and “Saxon” styles of scholarly interactions combine these dimensions, they may be looked upon as specific ways of influencing people in their cultural framework.
Hedges of ‘possibly’ vs. ‘probably’ types illustrate these linguistic techniques in West-European and in Russian discourses. Lexical properties of such hedges interact with grammatical and pragmatical categories of time and mood.

Keywords:  cognitive linguistics, discourse adaptation, probability vs. possibility, corpus analysis,
Socratic dialogue, opinion analysis of mass-media, contrastive analysis of Russian and West-European languages.

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Acknowledgments:  The research presented in section 4 is financially supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation,
project 19-18-00040 “Parametrization of linguistic creativity in discourse and language” at Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The research presented in sections 2 and 3 is financially supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation,
project 19-18-00429 “Language mechanisms of cultural system accommodation in various types of discourse of the 20th and 21st centuries” at Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

For citation:  Demyankov, V. Z. (2020). On linguistic techniques of adapting opinions. Voprosy Kognitivnoy Lingvistiki, 4, 5-17.
(In Russ.).

Pages:  5-17