Emotions in Impolite and Rude Communication

Impoliteness and rudeness trigger negative emotional reactions in interlocutors. The aim of this article is to analyze negative emotions which representatives of Russian and American communicative cultures feel during impolite and rude communication. The research is done on the basis of the data of emotional reactions obtained from the undertaken sociolinguistic study, as well as on the spoken discourse found in the Russian National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Internet. The current study is based on research in the theory of impoliteness and rudeness, linguistics of emotions and linguoculturology. The analysis and the key findings of the data support the hypothesis that Russians and Americans have similar basic emotions, in particular, the emotions of anger and sadness . The comparative analysis of the semantics of the words, nominating the emotions of anger and sadness prove different ethnocultural content of the corresponding emotional concepts, which should be considered in research on impoliteness and rudeness in the linguocultural aspect. Negative emotions can cause reverse impoliteness and rudeness, however, their realization in both linguocultures is determined by the pragmatic context. Nevertheless, the findings show differences in the extent of communicative restraint of Russians and Americans. The main research methods used in the study are sociolinguistic survey, corpus data analysis, conceptual analysis, descriptive and comparative methods.

basic emotions, negative emotions, impoliteness, rudeness, communicative culture