Introduction. The theory of generations by Neil Howe and William Strauss has become an integral part of “folk sociology” today, so that everyone somehow asks the question of which generational group he / she belongs to and what behavior is expected of him / her, in particular, in network communications. The behavior of representatives of different generational groups in network disputes based on self-identification remains no sufficiently investigated. In this article we present the results of an argumentative and pragmatic analysis of the specifics of the argumentation of representatives of generations X (born in the p eriod f rom 1 967 to 1981), Y ( born f rom 1 982 t o 2 003) and Z ( born a fter 2004), who fell into an uncomfortable situation of a network dispute.

Methodology and sources. The research is of a qualitative nature and its task is to formulate well-grounded assumptions about the connections of generational groups with certain argumentative means, among which are rhetorical techniques, sociolect, speech actions. The material of the study was comments on entries in thematic groups, discussions in chats and on the ”walls” of social networks (”VKontakte”, ”Facebook”, ”Instagram”), as well as some other sources (”Avito”, ”Twitter”, ”Snob.ru”). The selection of material is focused on finding the typical. The research focuses on uncomfortable for the participants moments of disputes, understood as situations that are most prompting for an identifying self-presentation.

Results and discussion. The materials studied make it possible to formulate the following assumptions. First, representatives of generations X, Y and Z use different techniques in difficult situations of network disputes. X apply the classic ”argument to age”. Y use the sociolect of trust and immediacy to shift the focus of the dispute, while in other cases they resort to a sociolect that contains a morally binding component. For Y a network dispute engenders a minimum of commitment and easily turns into a rhetorical skill competition. Z view network disputes as a platform for resolving negative affects. In an uncomfortable situation they use the techniques of verbal aggression, shifting the focus of the dispute to the justification of this very action. All three groups act in anticipation of the support of a sympathetic audience. The described types of behavior identify the representative of the generational group as for other participants in communication.

Conclusion. The features of generational groups, which are indicated by sociological data, convincingly explain the strategy of behavior of their representatives in difficult situations of network disputes. But it should be borne in mind that such strategies themselves and the argumentative and linguistic means suggested by them become patterns of generational identity. The socio-cultural dynamics of generations is therefore also associated with how these patterns will change in connection with changes in the network communication environment.

Introduction. Socio-political disciplines are an important component of the Humanities of the Soviet period of Russian history. Scientific communism, introduced as a compulsory subject in all Higher education institutions of the USSR in the last 30 years of the state's existence, was considered as the final expression of all the theoretical propositions of Marxism-Leninism. The article attempts to consider Scientific communism as a speculative speculative construction that, on the one hand, reproduces the terminological, logical, semantic and operational regulations of classical philosophical systems, and on the other hand, is a privileged mechanism of discursive production. As a typical example of how and through what tools the doctrine is legitimized, the texts of the work of A. K. Belykh, who for almost 30 years headed the Department of the theory of scientific communism at the faculty of philosophy of LSU (now SPBU).

Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on a philosophical analysis of texts representative of the epoch (D. de Tracy, grammar of Port Royal, Soviet Russian philosophers who worked in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, monographs by A. K. Belykh), included in the approved canonical corpus of Marxism-Leninism.

Results and discussion. Scientific communism, now virtually removed from historical memory, was an interesting example of how social thought evolved during the Soviet period of Russian history. The corpus of socio-political disciplines, which included Marxist-Leninist philosophy (dialectical materialism and historical materialism), political economy, history of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and scientific communism, was a single complex of speculative doctrine. All these disciplines, positioned as scientific knowledge, can be fully evaluated only in the context of the main trends in the development of social and philosophical knowledge of the New time, set by the Enlightenment era. Symbolic points of reference here can be considered projects of ”universal grammar” (Port Royal) and ”ideology” (Destute de Tracy).

Conclusion. Scientific communism is not an accidental, but characteristic of Russian thought, intellectual construct. Collective, i. e. a large number of people are involved in its implementation, which means it can be considered as a well-formed direction of social thought. Among the historical analogs that use the same strategic and tactical Arsenal of means of expression and discursive fixation, it can be compared and likened to the wellknown speculative constructs of a theological nature: high scholasticism.

Introduction. This research aims at analyzing the novel by Vladimir Nabokov Transparent Things (1972) from the perspective of post-modernist philosophy. By post-modernist philosophy I mean the post-structural view of the sign theory, that focuses on iconicity, symbolic and iconic nature of the sign, the сoncept of deconstruction, the concept of rhizome, the concept of silence, the concept of différance (as stated by Derrida), the concept of difference and repetition introduced by G. Deleuze. This philosophy is linked to a more general view expressed, for instance, by Derrida (in his work the Gift of Death (Donner la mort)). The main innovative element of this research, therefore, is to study the prose by Nabokov as an example of post-modernist writing simultaneously applying the views and concepts introduced by cognitive linguistics, literary critics and post-modern writers like J. Derrida, U. Eco, R. Barthes.

Methodology and sources. The research method used is semantic and structural analysis of the novel by Nabokov Transparent Things. Its main tool is the use of ideas introduced by French poststructuralists regarding the theory of sign, the symbolic nature of language, study of multiple meanings generated by a word in the process of its use and decoding.

Results and discussion. The results of this research allow to outline main tendencies in the development of the 20th century narrative. It adheres to the general law of multi-level structure of the novel, play of words and sounds, which corresponds to the general view of difference (as coined by Derrida), deconstruction, rhizome, iconicity of sign. The rhizomorphic structure of the novel at the same time is mirror-like, which allows to apply the difference-repetition dichotomy put forward by G. Deleuze. If the micro-structure of Nabokov’s texts allows to make generalization about the author’s use of language, its macro-structure reveals deeper philosophical notions, implying that the death of the character in the novel leads to the study of the transcendental, or ”the Other” in psychoanalytical terms, thus putting the plot on a different scale of values. The view of language and its structure in its relation to the notion of transparency, allows to see the sign in a Heideggerian way, as bearing the replica of the world, having more in itself about the world, than anything else.

Conclusion. The novel Transparent Things by Nabokov falls into the category of similar novels in which the author develops symbolic language and explores its potential, following the general pattern and establishing the rules of narrative construction in postmodern tradition.

Introduction. Apart from classical academic musicology, sociology, social anthropology and related disciplines such as sociolinguistics, philology, and cultural studies contributed to the development of research of music and its role in social, interpersonal relations, and individual experiences. The aim of this research is to investigate musical and singing traditions within the context of social relations, historical challenges, and sub-cultures by sociological and social anthropological approaches. In the last decades these research is of relevance for scholars interested in creativity and creative individuals whose impact effect is ambient in current social and political processes. The main tradition can be approached as a socio-cultural phenomenon emerging in the form of sub-culture.

Methodology and sources. Methodological b ackground o f t his r esearch i s o f s tructuralfunctional character. Within this framework art and creativity can be approached by various sets of research techniques. Culture of music can be studies both as an object and as a text; hence, textual and contextual approaches are of significance. In result, we can discover reasons motivating people to influence social relations and preconceptions within certain groups and societies. This approach allows the analysis the connections between individual and collective perceptions of people regarding their identities and place in a society. Finally, not only music shapes the context of sociolultural phenomena, but it is the context itself per se. For this paper I used texts and bibliographic data of singers such as follows: Son House, Robert Johnson, Skip James, William Samuel McTell, Edward W. Clayborn.

Results and discussion. The analysis of social history of blues in the end of the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth centuries as well as biographies of bluesmen along with the texts of their songs clearly demonstrates poetic motifs, individual and social reflections of different communities. The images such as love and flirt, manqué love, rest from hard work, roads, railways, trains, abandoned home with simultaneous lack of home, prison, illness, death and cemetery as well as the demonstration of all the listed images by socially oriented creativity in music, represents deep forms of marginality of those who sing it out in front of respected citizens living normal lives.

Conclusion. The material scrutinized in this paper clearly shoes that blues as a genre of music along with bluesmen who are representatives of a certain sub-culture, constitute a coherent social system which can be characterized a s a c ounter-culture. This social and cultural phenomenon in a way we encounter it derived from marginal status of its representatives. This marginal status becomes visible in blues as emotion and soulreflection to a large degree contradictory to the idea of respectable citizens and so-called “right way of life”.

Introduction. The coronavirus has become a serious test for national and regional power and management systems. Many systems have demonstrated their effectiveness and flexibility, competence and coherence. But there were also cases when erroneous decisions were made at the regional and even national levels. The purpose of this article is to determine the main trends in changes in the social behavior of the city government and citizens of St Petersburg in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

Methodology and sources. The article is based on classical and modern theories of urban sociology, sociology of the formation and functioning of public spaces and public life in a modern city, data from urban statistics on COVID incidence and empirical observations.

Results and discussion. From the very beginning, the city government of Saint Petersburg became the center of coordination and mobilization of all city resources to overcome the pandemic. However, it is not always possible to manage the available resources correctly and effectively. One of the reasons for the inefficient use of available resources was that the government did not define a strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic from the very beginning. Decisions were made situationally, sometimes inconsistently. It is worth noting that, despite the restrictions imposed, the social behavior patterns of a significant part of citizens have not changed significantly, but have only been transformed into hybrid social practices.

Conclusion. The study described the existing normative and hybrid models of social behavior of the government and citizens in the public space of the city in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, identified the most affected types of social relations (local-local) and local spaces (trade, entertainment, etc.) in which new social norms are most often violated.

Introduction. Regulation of social adaptation of migrants is one of the most important issues of state migration and social policy. One of the problems in the process of adaptation of migrants is the lack of a systematic approach to solving the problems faced by migrants in the host society. Therefore, it is necessary to study social work practices with migrants and their families to identify the most effective ones. The analysis of social work with migrants in state institutions of culture and social protection and in non-profit organizations reveals the situation with social work with migrants in Russia and identifies problems in the process of adaptation and integration of migrants into Russian society.

Methodology and sources. Data for the sociological study in the form of expert interviews were collected using a qualitative method for evaluating social work practices with migrants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2018–2019 in St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kazan with employees of professional centers for work with migrants, scientists specializing in the study of migration processes in their various aspects, and organizers of regular events (seminars, conferences) on this topic. The sample (30 experts) was formed by the snowball method. The number of expert interviews allowed us to cover a variety of social work practices both in government structures and in nonprofit organizations.

Results and discussion. The results of the study showed that various practices are used in social work with migrants in Russia. A distinctive feature of these practices is the dominant focus on socio-cultural adaptation and integration. The effectiveness of social work practices with migrants and their families can be defined in specific changes: improving awareness and legal literacy of foreign citizens, increasing their legal protection, simplifying access to health and education services, accessibility of assistance in finding housing and employment, the possibility of improving professional skills and knowledge of the language, culture, and history of Russian society.

Conclusion. Expert assessments revealed the most effective practices of social work with migrants used in Russia: legal advice, orientation courses, mobile counseling points where migrants can get advice from a social worker, a lawyer, and a doctor, and mobile applications integrated with state and non-state organizations. The results obtained show that the role of non-profit organizations (national cultural organizations for the preservation and development of cultures, the House of Friendship of Peoples) that use social practices to help migrants and their families adapt more effectively to the conditions of the host society is growing.

Introduction. The practice of obtaining family education has become a fashionable trend in our country in recent years. Despite the growing popularity among the population, we have not yet received enough scientific understanding of this form of training. The purpose of the article is to describe the social portrait of families who have chosen a family form of education for a child. The scientific novelty of the work is due to the empirical data presented in it, which have a dynamic nature of observing the studied object.

Methodology and sources. The methodological basis for the study was the conflict approach and the principles of a radical humanistic approach to education in the interpretation of I. Illich. The empirical basis of the study is the results of three surveys of parents o f c hildren f rom 6 t o 1 8 y ears o ld w ho are o n f amily e ducation. S urveys w ere implemented from 2016 to 2020, according to the same methodology and tools. To collect data, a questionnaire for an online survey was developed, which was distributed on social networks, mainly in VKontakte communities dedicated to family education. The total data set includes 443 respondents.

Results and discussion. According to surveys, children in family education grow up in full families, where the parent's ode has a high level of education, the mother, as a rule, does not work or has the possibility of a free schedule and is a teacher for the child. The main source of income in the family is the father. The total income of the family, which averages from 40 to 60 thousand rubles per month. In the family, most often two children, one of whom is in family education. Family education is mainly provided with primary school children.

Conclusion. The peculiarity of studying family education not only in our country, but also in the world is the lack of accurate statistics on the number of children of homeschoolers. In this regard, only non-random samples are possible in the implementation. The portrait of Russian homeschoolers differs from American ones, in particular in the level at which family education is implemented, the place of residence of families, and their income.

Introduction. The paper aims to establish whether cancer discourse can alter when being communicated via social networks. We supposed that every platform has intrinsic characteristics which might affect the way certain topics are being delivered. Because there has been much criticism from the cancer community about the media representation, we decided to observe what might be called an alternative discourse of cancer of social networks. Therefore, we chose to review Instagram accounts of two cancer influencers, who aspire to revise existing stereotypes about people with an incurable disease.

Methodology and sources. The chosen methodology includes the statistical concordance analysis, Metaphorical Identification Procedure (MIP), structural semantic and syntactic studies of two narratives organized as a minicorpus. The combined approach was employed to reveal lexical markers of both cancer discourse and Instagram narratives in the narratives of two Insta influencers Nicky Newman and Laura Hughes.

Results and discussion. The results of the study suggest that Instagram narratives of cancer patients differ from other texts about cancer. Bloggers strive to maintain constant simultaneous communication with a large number of people; therefore, their texts are designed to be entertaining, involving and diverse in subject matter. When narrating about their life with the cancer diagnosis, bloggers broadcast a positive media image of a happygo-lucky person. In the narratives chosen for this study, there is hardly an example of the CANCER-WAR metaphor. The main ways of conceptualizing cancer are the CANCERCONSPIRACY, CANCER-JOURNEY, CANCER-COHABITANT metaphors.

Conclusion. Quantitative analysis of the English language corpus aimed at identifying key words and concordances of the lexeme ”cancer”, does not help fully define the cancer discourse. It is necessary to further research into the obtained data. Consequently, it is necessary to take into account the genre of ”cancer” narratives.

Introduction. The paper reviews the specifics of the implementation of the discrediting strategy as the dominant of the discursive personality of an American political radio commentator. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the interest of modern linguistics in the description of generalized typical discursive personalities. The scientific novelty of the research is due to the fact that the discursive personality of the political radio commentator has not yet become the object of a special study. The study of a discursive personality is reduced to description of the types of communicative tonality to which a person resorts in the process of communication, as well as identification of the main communicative-pragmatic strategies used by them in order to achieve the goals of communication. The discursive personality of a political commentator-radio host is realized in the generated media texts, which are characterized by a specific communicative tonality due to a distant format and a technically mediated form of communication; social evaluation; ideological focus and polydiscourse.

Methodology and sources. The study is drawn on the corpus compiled of scripts of 13 complete radio broadcasts of famous American political commentators (Glenn Beck, Michael Alan Weiner and Mark Levin) with a total volume of 115 792 words. The radio broadcasts were devoted to the election campaign (October – November 2016) and postelection polemics (January – March 2017). Based on the quantitative methods and contextual analysis, conclusions were made about the leading discrediting tactics of the genre under study and the main linguistic means of their actualization.

Results and discussion. The strategy of discrediting is shown to be supported by a system of communicative tactics, the main of which are: the tactics of compromising the opponent, the tactics of verbal discrimination and the tactics of verbal insinuation. Each of the tactics, in turn, is implemented by a set of its typical communicative passages. Verbal insinuation and verbal discrimination in the studied genre have been established as the ways of linguistic implementation of such discrediting tactics of emotional impact. The role of evaluative vocabulary, slang, low colloquialisms, invectives, stylistic figurative means, occasionalisms and references to precedent phenomena as means of implementing discrediting tactics are considered. It has been proven that speech tactics of discrediting are never implemented in the studied type of discourse in their pure form since tactical schemes interact and overlap each other.

Conclusion. The discrediting tactics in the genre under study are found to be a way of implementing speech aggression. Speech aggression as a feature of the discursive personality of an American political radio host is so affective and hostile that it can be argued that the ethics of speech behavior is not among the communicative values of this linguistic and cultural type. The rejection of ethical communication behavior is largely motivated by the need to participate in a tough competition in the context of the growing intensity of the information flow in modern media communication.

Introduction. The paper studies specifics of the communicative behavior of native speakers of English and Arab speakers of English as a second language in business situations. The novelty of the study is implied by the fact that it establishes ethnocultural features of comissive speech acts in value-marked situations in the English-language business discourse. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the interest in speech acts functioning in lingvocultural perspective, which studies patterns of communicative behavior in cross-cultural situations and issues of verbal representation of speech acts in the speech of native and non-native speakers of English as they are employed in various genres and types of discourse.

Methodology and sources. The study employs methods of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis interpretive method. The study is drawn on a corpus compiled of business letters written by employees of United Arab Emirates companies who speak English as a second language (LBLC). The corpus LBLC comprises 160 letters, 33 907 words. To identify cultural differences, Business Letter Corpus of 1 million words that contains letters written by British and American writers was chosen.

Results and discussion. The results of cross-cultural comparison of commissive speech acts representation in value marked situations in the Learner Business Letter Corpus (LBLC) and Business Letter Corpus are presented. It has been concluded that both corpora under study display similarity as for functions of comissive speech acts in value-marked communicative situations whereas differences are revealed in the variation of lexical and grammatical choices that represent these speech acts and their pragmatics. In the BLC the situations when commissive speech acts correlate with apology the addresser commits themselves to obligation not to perform actions that are undesirable for the addressee or prevent the circumstances that might have negative consequences for the addressee. In the LBLC, following the communicative act of apology the addresser emphasizes the causes that have resulted in his failure to complete his obligations and promises to eliminate these causes. The texts in BLC employ explicit speech acts of guarantee that represent an obligation on condition that the addressee completes a certain action and emphasize the sincerity of the addresser. The texts in LBLC do not contain any instances of explicit speech acts of guarantee and the utterance is interpreted as a guarantee on the basis of declarations expressed in the letter.

Conclusion. It is concluded that in cross-cultural value-marked situations speech acts implementation follows algorithms that are relevant in a given culture and display cultural specificity that can be studies by linguistic methods.

Introduction. The article reveals a complicated language situation in the Flemish region of Belgium - a progressing extinction of Germanic dialects, which are historically spread on this territory. Each dialectal group has its unique features, and the West-Flemish and Limburgish groups might have become grounds for particular languages.

Methodology and sources. The methodological base consists in a complex approach, combining the comparative-historical and contrastive methods with the method of sociolinguistic interpretation. The investigation is conducted on the language material, collected from different dialectal dictionaries of Dutch, as well as from special linguistic papers on the language situation in Flanders.

Results and discussion. The article represents a multiplicity of Germanic dialects, existing on the territory of modern Flanders. A short revue is given on lexical and grammatical peculiarities of four main dialectal groups, as well as on their peculiar phonetics. A special attention is, respectively, paid to the urban dialects of Antwerp, Gent, Bruges and Hasselt. There are analyzed some interferential phenomena, caused by the contact of the investigated dialects with Romanic and Germanic environment and occurring on all language levels - from phonetic to the syntactic ones. It has been suggested, that certain specific grammar forms in Flemish dialects may be result of phonetic interference. For Marols, which originally belongs to the group of Brabant dialects, the juncture between Germanic morphosyntactic structure and Roman lexis is discussed.

Conclusion. For the last 20 years the percentage of persons, speaking the Germanic dialects of Flanders, has demonstrated a catastrophic decrease. Along with that, the main features of these dialects (mostly of the Brabant ones) have gone over to an intermediate language “tussentaal”, in both lexis and grammar. This language is being formed inbetween the Germanic dialects and Dutch; the latter is represented in the Flemish region by two variants – standard (common) Dutch and Belgian Dutch. The progressing decrease in the number of persons, speaking the autochthonous dialects of Flanders, is thoughtprovoking towards the exigency to fix the disappearing language variants through a strict scientific way.