Linguistic Explication of the Opposition “We – They” in the Informal Communication of Russian Students

Abstract

Features of linguistic pragmatics reveal interesting embodiment in informal communication. In Russian students’ social networks communication on the organization of educational activities the presence of the opposition "we – they" is obvious despite being more typical of political discourse. The article uses extensive empirical material to trace the features of the linguistic explication of this opposition in the messages of students during the pandemic in the most popular Russian social network “VKontakte”. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of the linguistic explication of this opposition and decode the pragmatic attitudes of the authors of messages on a large empirical material. The texts contrast students as recipients of educational services (“we”) and university employees who organize the educational process (“they”). The specificity of rhetoric is determined by the unambiguous orientation to "their" audience. The pragmatic intentions of the authors is to find support, express solidarity, express emotions. Messages are distinguished by some theatricality and carnivalism. The characteristic of the “we” group is weakly manifested (in contrast to political discourse), the subject of discussion-criticism in the vast majority of messages is “they”. The article analyzes such features of the linguistic explication of the opposition "we – they" as lexical representatives of this dichotomy, metonymy “part – whole” (“individual – group”; “special case – general pattern”), permanent speeches from a collective person, appeals to a group, rhetorical questions, negative assessments, manipulations, group narratives, irony and sarcasm (means of discrediting opponents), verbal aggression, etc. The results are of interest both in terms of identifying the features of the individual’s speech behavior and the collective, mass worldview in the conditions of “one’s own” audience, and in terms of research specifics of speech impact in different types of discourse.