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The article reviews the International Conference “Modern speech communication in different spheres of society” that took place on October 20–21, 2023, at the Institute of Philology and Journalism of Saratov State University. The conference was dedicated to a unique event – the 100th anniversary of SSU professor, an outstanding linguist, Olga Borisovna Sirotinina. Researchers from different cities of Russia and different countries (Armenia, Poland, Mongolia) responded to this significant event. At the opening of the conference welcoming words were said by the Deputy-Rector for Research and Digital Development of SSU A. A. Koronovsky; Head of the Department of General Literary Studies and Journalism, Professor of SSU V.V. Prozorov; Head of Priority Projects and Programs, Professor of SSU E. G. Elina; Professor of the State Institute of Russian Language named after A. S. Pushkin, Chairman of the Russian Association of Researchers, Teachers and Teachers of Rhetoric V. I. Annushkin. The speakers emphasized the timeliness and significance of the conference, and highly appreciated the many years of scientific activity of O. B. Sirotinina. The article provides a brief overview of plenary and sectional reports. At the plenary session, such problems were raised as those of the history and formation of linguistic science in Saratov, and the development by O. B. Sirotinina and V. E. Goldin of the theory of types of speech culture. Some of the reports were dedicated to O. B. Sirotinina as a wonderful researcher, a unique person, the author of the book of memoirs “Life regardless, or I am a happy person” and personal diaries “And life will fly by like a dream...”. The sections were dedicated to the following areas: “Modern speech communication in the educational environment of universities and schools”, “Spoken speech and its place in the modern communicative space”, “Speech culture and its formation in modern communicative practices”, “Institutional discourse and issues in studying this discourse”, “Media sphere and media language”. The conference has become a historic occasion in the life of Saratov State University.

The article discusses the 85th anniversary of the Doctor of Philology, Professor of Saratov State University, M. A. Kormilitsyna. A well- known scientist in Russia and abroad, Margarita Anatolyevna has devoted her whole life to scientific activity. Together with her teacher and friend, O. B. Sirotinina, M. A. Kormilitsyna was at the origin of Saratov Linguistic School of the functioning of the Russian language. The article highlights the main stages of the scientist’s scientific activity, presents the areas of scientific interests: syntax, stylistics and culture of the speech of the Russian language, colloquial speech, the language of the media, etc. All scientific and educational activities of Margarita Anatolyevna are based on the principles of Saratov Linguistic School, the main methodological principles of which are attentive and unbiased attitude to language, its facts, accuracy in their analysis, striving not for superficial, but for a deep understanding of the essence of linguistic phenomena. The article reveals the significance of the works of M. A. Kormilitsyna for modern linguistics: her works on colloquial speech, the language of the media, the effectiveness of communication, overcoming communicative risks, cause numerous responses in the scientific community. M. A. Kormilitsyna pays a lot of attention in her work to editorial activities (work on the interuniversity collection of scientific papers Problems of speech communication, participation in the editorial board of the journal Media Linguistics, etc.). The article reveals not only the scientific, but also the pedagogical activity of the scientist: students and teachers know Margarita Anatolyevna as a highly erudite, creatively working teacher. M. A. Kormilitsyna has been the head of the Department of the Russian Language, Speech Communication and Russian as a Foreign Language (the new name of the department) for 25 years. Colleagues respect Margarita Anatolyevna for her honesty, integrity, and friendly attitude towards people.

The present article deals with the subgenre ‘address’ in the speech behavior of members of the Soviet intelligentsia. The research is based on 9 Soviet plays of V. Azernikov, S. Aleshin, A. Arbuzov, L. Zorin, S. Mikhalkov, M. Roshchin. The character’s education, profession, the author’s description, the actual speech portrait of the character (lexical, stylistic, communicative content), moral qualities of the character were important criteria for definition of a member of intelligentsia. All the selected characters were divided into three generational groups. The analysis showed that the subgenre “address” is a polyfunctional communicative unit, one of the components of the genres “greeting”, “farewell”, “congratulation”, “gratitude”, “apology”, “compliment”, “consolation”, “reproach”, “argument”, “declaration of love”. Addresses with possessive pronouns, ameliorative adjectives, metaphors and precedent names are actively used in the speech of members of the intelligentsia.

The article presents an overview of research literature on the etiquettical conventional speech genre “wish” in Russian and foreign linguistics. The author compares definitions of the lexeme “wish” in various lexicographic sources, considers researchers’ approaches to determining the status of a wish and identifies some debatable problems of studying the genre. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of wishes within the theory of speech acts and the theory of speech genres. The article also compares researchers’ viewpoints on the debatable problems concerning pious wishes and evil wishes, as well as gives an overview of the works concerning grammatical and syntactic means of making wishes and typical models of the genre. The article provides the analysis of works with the existing classifications of wishes based on their structure and on being etiquettical/non-etiquettical, stereotypical/non-stereotypical, etc., as well as the analysis of works based on ideas about the field structure of the genre, where the core consists of clichéd wishes, and the periphery – of non-standard statements, or (according to another theory) explicit statements and imperative/modified wishes, respectively. The research points out the importance of investigating extralinguistic factors (gender, age, status-role relations of communicants) in the study of wishes. The paper reviews articles which deal with the comparison and collation analysis of wishes in different languages (Russian, English, German, Chinese, etc.). The conclusion outlines some directions for the further study of this genre in various areas and situations of communication.

The article deals with the study of everyday virtual business communication. The digital age has a huge impact on individuals, signifi cantly changing their lives, and the life of society is increasingly immersed in the virtual space. The material of the study is Internet communication, specifi cally group communication of citizens, residents of Saratov, in one of the commercial chats: the speech of women’s clothing sellers and buyers. The purpose of the study is to show the development of the chat genre and its functioning in business communication. The methods applied are those of participant observation and of discursive analysis. The specifi c features of the chat were manifested in a steadily followed topic of communication (no changes of topic occur). This refl ects one of the important communication practices in people’s daily lives – the one related to the purchase / sale of goods. The business sphere leaves its mark on the choice of the type of communication: a mixed type of communication (semi-offi cial) is being implemented. The dominant communicative strategy is the strategy of cooperative speech interaction, including courtesy tactics (tactics representing initial and fi nal contact, gratitude expression tactics, compliment tactics, etc.). These developments represent the process whereby a culture of virtual business communication based on the principle of mutual respect is being formed. The article also studies linguistic features of the chat. In the speech of the communicants, the vocabulary of the thematic group “Clothes and hats” is mainly used: blouse,turtleneck, jeans, jumper, bonnet, etc. Another word group constitutes foreign vocabulary related to the world of fashion which has not yet been fixed in the Russian language (jeggings, snood, skinny, moms, etc.). Conversational signals used in the chat include diminutives (blouse, skirt, novelty), communicatives (for example, the conjunction A used in the initial position in interrogative constructions). The chat contains manifestations of the offi cial business style in the fi eld of trade – professional speech stereotypes: available, new arrival, etc. Attention is drawn to the use of emoticons: their set is limited and chat-specifi c. Chat communication can be defi ned as eff ective communication that improves the life of citizens.

The article analyzes the modern speech of children aged from 2-3 to 14 years and examines how other languages and cultures infl uence it. The research material comprises handwritten and transcribed audio and video recordings of children’s colloquial speech, correspondence of children in the Viber messenger. The material was collected during 2016–2022, its total volume amounts to about 22,000 instances of word usage. The methods used are those of included observation and discursive analysis. The vocabulary of children aged 2-3 to 14 years was shown to be actively supplied with lexical units sourced from the English language and Internet slang. The analysis of oral and written genres (post, stories, battle, live broadcast) created by children within the popular social networks TikTok, Likee, Instagram (2017) allowed us to establish that children typically copy speech patterns and behaviors of popular bloggers. A study of children’s voice and written messages in smartphone messengers Viber, Telegram (2022) revealed the formation of a specifi c vocabulary in children’s speech, including not only Anglicisms and school jargon, but also a telltale sign of Internet communication – the reduction of words to one syllable. Written messages are organized in a specifi c manner, consisting of statements, each of which is presented as a separate post. Various surveys and diff erent types of tasks based on the “reply and send to a friend” pattern are common. Using virtual reality, children strive for self-realization: they sing, act out dialogues with toys, conduct “scientifi c research”, but in the process they use less than perfect, most often foreign, role models. The authors conclude that not only the English language content of the Internet, but also the speech behavior, ideals and values advertised by popular, primarily Western, leaders of the blogosphere, have a signifi cant impact on modern children’s speech.

The article examines the changes that have occurred in family-related communication. The research is based on family speech handwritten notes and transcripts of voice records made by the author and the students of her special seminar, correspondence of family members and relatives in various messengers, as well as on the speech material presented in articles and books published by various researchers. The purpose of the study is to show how changes in everyday life, caused by new realities of the domestic sphere, various events in the country and the world, the development of information technology, aff ect family-related communication and speech, and by and large, the very existence of the family. Changes in the domestic sphere – the emergence of new social objects, new household cleaning supplies, development of fashion industry and everything that is, in one way or another, connected with the daily routine of a person – lead to expanding and updating the lexical fi eld of familyrelated communication. There is high penetration of new lexical units, primarily borrowings from other languages, into family speech, including the speech of children. The research has shown that such an active and rapid borrowing process can give rise to misunderstanding between diff erent generations in the family. The focus of the study is on the development of mediated communication in everyday life. Both positive and negative factors of information technologies infl uence are noted. Mediatization of the population, the use of cellular phones aff ect the nature of family communication, etiquette, and cultural norms and absorb free time. The line between work and home communication is blurred, which has a devastating eff ect on the life of the family as one of the most important institutions of society, designed to ensure the stability of its existence.

The article presents a rhetorical analysis of published speeches of P. A. Stolypin, an outstanding statesman of Russia of the beginning of the 20th century, which were presented in the State Duma and the State Council in 1906–1911. An analysis of the manifestation of the most signifi cant concepts of “Russia”, “power”, “law”, “right”, “duty”, “justice”, which the speaker constantly refers to, made it possible to show the specifi c features of his personality: patriotism, faith in people, inspiration by Orthodoxy, the desire for change based on sanity and precise calculation, activity (frequent use of the pronoun I with the words must, ready, etc.), decisiveness, fi rmness in solving state problems, in the struggle to defend the interests of Russia, as he understood them, self-criticism, willingness to take responsibility for his actions. Speech facts that testify to the rhetorical skill of P. A. Stolypin are noted: his concern for the addressee, manifested in the desire to clearly, simply, eminently argue the idea (the strategy of preliminary clarifi cation of the state of aff airs), in the dialoguization of speeches; respect for opponents; a clear structure of speeches, a combination of diff erent styles in them with a special role of high style; the use of various layers and semantic fi elds of lexical units, tropes, rhetorical devices (metaphors, epithets, repetitions, series of homogeneous members, gradation, rhetorical questions and appeals, precedent phenomena, etc.). Of particular importance is the metaphorical nature of speech: the metaphors of the building, illness and recovery are revealed. Rhetorical elocutionary means increase the impact on the listeners, their motivation to make the right decisions. P. A. Stolypin’s special attitude to the word can be seen, which, from his point of view, should be truthful, correspond to actions, thoughts and feelings.

In the article six lexemes of the thematic group ‘Clothes and household items’, the subgroup ‘Jewelry and occult objects’: diamond, fringe, beads, sultan, amulet, and mascot are considered according to the methodology proposed earlier by the authors, including the lexicographic, etymological and semantic aspects of the study of Arabisms, analysis of their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, adaptation processes in the receiving language and use in its functional styles. Based on the materials of the National Corpus of the Russian language, the specific character of their functioning in the Russian speech is revealed.