Information about the defended postgraduate students

Ekaterina Shchelchkova
Country: Russia
Year of protection: 2015
Research topic: Functional and Pragmatic Features of the Speech Genre of Invitation in the American and Russian Communicative Cultures
Annotation to the dissertation: This thesis explores the functional and pragmatic features of the speech genre of “Invitation” in the American and Russian communicative cultures. Based on ethnographic observation, questionnaires and interviews, it examines the two pragmatic types of invitation – genuine, and false (“phony”) which are regarded as subordinate speech genres with particular focus on the American and Russian communication strategies (politeness strategies) and linguistic means employed for their performance in a variety of social contexts. It also discusses criteria which can be used to differentiate genuine invitations from false ones revealed through sociolinguistic research showing how Americans and Russians conceptualize false invitations. The results of this research have implications for cross-cultural pragmatics, social linguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication theory and teaching English and Russian as second languages.

Margarita Kharlova
Country: Russia
Year of protection: 2016
Research topic: Impoliteness and Rudeness in the American and Russian Communicative Cultures
Annotation to the dissertation: This thesis is devoted to a comparative study of pragmatic and ethnocultural aspects of the communicative categories of impoliteness and rudeness in the American and Russian communicative cultures. Impoliteness and rudeness are analyzed in close connection with the category of politeness and as discursive and pragmatic categories which possess ethnocultural specifics. Based on the results of the sociolinguistic study, it examines and compares major characteristics of impoliteness and rudeness in American English and Russian, as well as analyzes and compares the peculiarities of how Americans and Russians conceptualize the phenomena under study. The paper also contains the results of the comparative study of impoliteness and rudeness in interpersonal everyday discourse in the American and Russian communicative cultures. It reveals and analyzes the communicative strategies of impoliteness and rudeness as well as linguistic and nonlinguistic means of their expression. The results of this research have implications for linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, communicative ethnostylistics, the theory of intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, teaching English and Russian, and the working practice of employees of international companies.