Слово.ру: балтийский акцент (Jan 2024)
Ideas about private space boundaries and tact in Russian communicative culture: results of a sociolinguistic experiment
Abstract
This article discusses the results of a survey underlying a reconstruction of ideas about tact and tactlessness in Russian communicative culture. The author considers the concept of tact to be a communicative strategy within the category of politeness that is closely related to native speakers' notion about the boundaries of private space. Thus, tact is defined as a communicative strategy driven by the speaker's desire to avoid infringing on the private space of their interlocutor. Moreover, ideas about the boundaries of private space and tact are among the most significant elements in describing a national communicative culture. This study focuses on the tactless question as a typical way of violating private space boundaries. The survey questionnaire was based on interviewee behaviour observations, with one interviewee labelling the interviewer's questions tactless or indecent. It was established that the presence of an immediate addressee and a mass audience sets the parameters for evaluating public statements in terms of their acceptability or face-threatening potential. This study aims to analyse the informants' assessment of 'tactless' questions proposed in the questionnaire as regards their appropriateness in public communication. The survey results are divided into the following thematic blocks corresponding to communication risk zones: age, family and marriage, religion and sex. The quantitative findings provide information on the social norms intuitively classified by Russian native speakers as preventing intrusion into private space. They also give an insight into the effect of age characteristics on statement evaluations. Informants' responses tend to exhibit ambiguity in assessments, highlighting the variability of contemporary perceptions regarding tact and tactlessness, thereby reflecting shifts in social norms.
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