The structure of flirtation as a speech genre in dialogues of Soviet intelligentsia: Composite genres and subgenres (based on plays by L. Zorin and V. Azernikov)

Abstract

The article studies speech behavior of the class of Soviet intelligentsia in communicative situations of flirting. The research is based on Soviet comedy plays of the 1960s–1970s: “Dobryaki”, “Entsiklopedisty”, “Tranzit”, “Pokrovskie vorota”, “Teatral’naya fantaziya” by Leonid Zorin and “Vozmozhny varianty” by Valentin Azernikov. The relevance of the topic is related to the increased interest ofmodern linguistics in the verbal means typical of romantic discourse in general and of the genre of flirting in particular. Authors of dramatic texts create a speech portrait of the characters and place them in different communicative situations using speech genres and their verbal means of actualization, appropriated for the social group to which the character belongs. The semantic content of the lexeme “flirt” includes the following main features: ambiguity, elements of comic genres and play. The article presents the subgenres of the speech genre of flirting: compliment, gratitude, hint, joke. The author describes the revealed verbal means which actualize the speech genre of flirting in the speech of the class of Soviet intelligentsia. They are complicated and ambiguous constructions, polysemous words, lexical repetitions, use of plural “you”, vocabulary with positive semantics in assessing moral qualities, precedent statements. Stage directions describing characters’ intonation, gestures and movements are treated as supporting means of modeling of the non-verbal behavior in flirting.  

Keywords

• flirtation
• speech behavior
• speech genre
• subgenre
• compliment
• soviet intelligentsia
• dramaturgic dialogue
• verbal communication