From expressiveness to manipulation: about forming expressive means of a language (based on the Russian and German languages)
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-6-36-45
This article analyzes the expressive function of comic farewell formulas in German speech. Expressiveness is viewed as a language’s ability to realize an expressive function that is older than the language itself. A special role is given to the core structure of the language, which developed in the initial stages of its development and serves as the foundation of communication. It is the core layers of the lexicon that serve as the distinctive feature of the system’s uniqueness in the creation of modes of expression. The empirical basis of the study consists of 46 units of speech etiquette, representing farewell formulas in the German language, divided according to their referential assignment into four groups of phenomena, primarily of onymic nature. Additionally, the corpus units are subdivided into formulas containing only native morphemic material and those consisting of native and foreign-language components, allowing them to be recognized as products of speech manipulation. The methodological basis of the work is formed by a combination of general and specific scientific methods. General scientific methods include cognitive methods (descriptive, oppositional, interpretative) and paired logical techniques (synthesis-analysis, abstraction-grouping, deduction-induction); the specific scientific segment of methods is represented by the tools of functional stylistics, the exponent of which is the functional method. The studied farewell formulas serve to create a comic effect and are aimed at de-ritualizing everyday etiquette by increasing the diversity of the speech repertoire in informal communication situations. Despite the fact that these phenomena are formed by common methods – lexical, semantic, and lexical-semantic (mixed), among which the lexical method remains the leading one, their wordformation patterns cannot be considered systemic due to the presence of multiple precedents of combination and nesting. Manipulation is a special case of word formation with varying degrees of spontaneity and is carried out primarily on the basis of existing linguistic material, both native and borrowed. A distinction must be made between word formation that follows the framework of systemic, that is, generally accepted methods, and word creation with features of nesting, limited by genre and stylistic boundaries or a specific communicative situation. The expressiveness of language should be understood as a functional tool, implementing the principle of transition from discreteness (a single element) to plurality (many elements) and vice versa.
Keywords: expressiveness, expressive means, ways of word formation, manipulation, system, elements, speech combination
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Issue: 6, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: THEORETICAL, COMPARATIVE-CONTRASTIVE AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Pages: 36 — 45
Downloads: 1