Invective vocabulary in media discourse at the beginning of the 21st century: a psycholinguistic aspect

The third group is made up of the words with the score of 1.03-1.54. From the perspective of the female respondents the linguistic units with this score (жаднюга, нахаба. злодюга, морда, пика, рило, баньки, шнобель, etc.) comprise 7.7 % of the words offered to them; whereas, according to the respondents of the opposite gender, this amount of words reaches 11.9%. Among them are such nouns as алкаш, ботан, вискочка, жаднюга, злодюга, гультяй, пияка, шахрай, дятел, осел, морда, пика, рило, баньки, копита, шнобель, etc.

The female respondents gave 0 (zero) points to the words собака, макітра, фізія, диня, селючка, хохолка, вискочка, etc., which constitutes 0.9% of all proposed stimuli, while the male respondents gave the same score to the linguistic units ділок, піжон, селюк, бомж, наркоман, бик, кабан, кріт, собака, клешні, граблі, ласти, etc., which makes up 3.5%. of the words demonstrated to them.

In the framework of our research we focused attention on the amount of those nominations that each of the respondents rated as the highest, and found out which lexico-semantic group they belong to. According to our estimates, the highest percentage is characteristic of the words of lexico-semantic groups A and B (see below) because their considerable portion was rated as the highest by the representatives of both genders. At the same time, a peripheral zone is made up of lexico-semantic groups C and D rated by the female and male respondents almost commensurately.

The experiment allowed analyzing the emotional reaction of males and females to pejorative by-words. As evident from the results of the experiment, females are getting insulted by a larger bulk of the analyzed nominations than males.

Discussion

In terms of communicative linguistics, the pragmatic goal of the invective speech tactics is to achieve a perlocutionary effect of the insult (to evoke the addressee's feelings of emotional pain, bitterness, anxiety by humiliating him/her in front of a community, colleagues, friends, family) owing to intolerant interaction, imbalance of relations between interlocutors during a conflict discourse. As Issers states, the tactics of the insult reflects the state of strong emotional intenseness of communicators; it is employed mostly at the climatic point of the conflict, therefore, the emotional statements serve as the major means of its implementation. The addresser sees his/her communicative mission in humiliating and ridiculing the target of the insult (Issers, 2008, p. 164-165). The dominant marker of insulting tactics is the invective vocabulary. The latter performs its appropriate pragmatic function either directly, through its own lexical meaning or indirectly, through a contextual environment. There are occasions where, depending on the communicative intentions of the speaker, the lexical items of a normative type can acquire an insulting meaning.

The invective vocabulary of the semantic field (domain) “Human” is employed extensively in modern mass media and social networks. It provides a negatively coloured appraisal of human appearance, inner world, behavior, activities, etc. Being multifaceted the invective vocabulary can be arbitrarily divided into two large groups, each containing a number of thematic subgroups:

1. The vocabulary made up of the words with a pejorative and insulting (invective) seme in their lexical meaning:

- non-taboo colloquial, derogatory, familiar (off-handed, informal, nonofficial), swear and jargon words marked in dictionaries with specific labels (pejor., derog., fam., invect., colloq., jarg.), e.g.: Краще людина без досвіду, ніж сволота: Гордон зробив неочікувану заяву (a headline); Президент Бразилії ... назвав 16-річну еко-активістку зі Швеції Ґрету Тунберґ паскудницею після того, як вона написала текст у мережі...; «Шльондра!»: український політик «розніс» топ-пропагандистку Кремля у ПАРЄ;

- taboo obscene words, jargonisms, etc. For example: якщо нормальних зарплат у лікарів немає, яка це на фіг реформа?;

- the vocabulary that acquires a pejorative and insulting (invective) connotation due to a metaphorical transfer based on associations with wildlife, inanimate objects and environmental phenomena. For example: «Всі «кроти» з російськими чи іншими паспортами мають бути вичищені звідси»; Обранець до парламенту від «Слуги народу» назвав журналістку «Нового времени» «тупою вівцею»; Поводишся, як породиста кобила на вигоні, - сказав чоловік.

2. The vocabulary (codified, normative) made up of words deprived of a pejorative and insulting (invective) seme in their basic lexical meanings, though they can acquire it in the context as a result of re-conceptualization. As Topchyi pointed out, “...the semantics of a codified neutral lexical item, depending on the author's intention and on a language environment can acquire specific invective connotations” (Topchyi, 2018, p. 98).

The invective vocabulary characterized by a varying intensity of the insulting effect is targeted at someone's external and internal features. First and foremost, these are:

A) human psychology, mental deviations, moral qualities, intellectual development, experience, headwork, character traits, standard of social behaviour. For example: Така наволоч прийшла до влади на крові Майдану.... The lexical item наволоч means:

1. collect., derog. Mean, worthless people harmful to society; rabble (Slovnyk ukrainskoi movy, vol. 5, 1974, p. 39); Промосковська профура. The lexical item профура has the following meanings (marked by the labels): 1. crim., derog., invect. Woman. 2. yng; derog. Woman of easy virtue (Ukrainskyi Zhargon, p. 279); «один радикальний політик» дозволив собі принизити людей з синдромом Дауна, коли публічно кричав що «в уряді - дауни», через що виник скандал. The lexical item даун means: yng; pejor., iron. stupid, ignorant person. Derived from the medical term Down's syndrome (Ukrainskyi Zhargon, p. 116);

B) human behaviors, lifestyle, actions, habits, abilities, activities, occupations, professional, and business qualities. For example: Ковелем керує «банда нікчем», - депутат Ковельської міськради; Під Києвом ділок підробив документи та привласнив понад 35 га землі;

C) human appearance, physical qualities and flaws associated, in particular, with pejorative nominations of body parts (somatisms). For example: «У нього квадратна ««морда лица» і великий трудовий мозоль у вигляді живота»... (www.gazeta.ua, 12.10.2018); «Кому треба ці вибори, якщо вони все одно нічого не поміняють. Хіба рил жирних у Верховній Раді стане більше»; «Бодай би в тебе репнула макітра!»;

D) human social set-up and status, financial situation, age; ethnic, national, race, gender, religious, professional affiliation; political views, anti-social (deviant) groups. The invective vocabulary is one of the most common means of expressing verbal aggression against the members of specific ethnic groups, races, religions, sexual minorities, etc.

The invectives are frequently used in various types of discourse, specifically, in a political conflict discourse. Their function is to demoralize, humiliate, discredit the opponent, to downgrade a person, thereby asserting oneself and/or exhibiting one's strengths. However, an excessive manifesting of such strategies can discredit none other than the addresser. The negative impact of the invective in this case is bilateral, because it is targeted not only at the addressee, but also at the addresser of communication. By solidifying the destructive tendencies (profanity is one of them) in one's behavior, a person distorts his/her own personality and inflicts a moral and psychological damage on it. In addition, the invective stuns a person who uses it. Resorting to the invective is, in fact, a recognition of one's psychological bankruptcy, a surrender to the situation (Makarenko, 2013, p. 336-347).

The invective vocabulary is also employed as a means of moral and psychological pressure on the addressee (as a tool of extortion, threat and blackmail). It serves as a lever of psychological violence, in particular, during the cases of bullying and mobbing behaviour (mostly in schools, institutions and organizations) affecting the honor and dignity of the individual and causing his or her feeling of insult. The invective of any verbal form is characterized by a varying intensity of a psycho-traumatic action on the recipient, stirring up, literally, a chain reaction: protracted mental sufferings, depression and, as an after-effect, deterioration of health. The extent of such an impact is directly associated with a number of extralingual factors: diminished or lost social and business reputation, undermined life and professional prospects of the individual, financial straits, etc. Under the law, the victim has the right to apply to court and claim compensation for moral or material damage caused by the offender.

The intensity of a psychological impact of the invective varies and is determined, on the one hand, by a semantic content and a target of an insulting expression and, on the other hand. by the recipient's age and his or her individual and psychological characteristics, the level of his/her social manners, mentality, temperament, stress resistance and a status in a society. Sneering at the representatives of Jewish community, for example, is definitely a profound insult to them; a resident of an African country can be deeply insulted by the sneers at his or her race; a male will be insulted by derisive remarks on his gender, physical condition, strength and performance efficiency; a similar effect for a female would have the insulting comments on her appearance, dignity, moral qualities, motherhood and age; a qualified doctor or an architect would be insulted by an attempt to downgrade his or her standard of professional competence; a scientist would be insulted if somebody tried to deride his or her scientific accomplishments; an artist would be deeply wounded by someone's insulting assessment of his or her talent and oeuvre; for a military person an insulting effect would be caused by somebody's jeering at his or her service to the Motherland; equally insulting for a physically challenged person would be an offensive word to the effect of his or her physical or mental affliction.

A special pragmatic function of expressing the insult is performed by jargonisms and slang words and phrases which fall into several groups in compliance with the social strata they belong to. That's why this vocabulary is described by means of the following attributives: criminal, youth (student, school), military, professional (i.e. used by IT specialists, athletes, motorists, musicians, businessmen, representatives of informal groups). Some linguists identify jargonisms and slang with the invectives, others differentiate them. Stavytska (2005, p. 37) makes a distinction between the concepts of “jargon” and “invective”. The dominant aim of jargon as a group of words is to separate a certain social group from the other social groups. The role of the invectives, by contrast, is merely a function. We believe that the invectives should include only those jargonisms that are employed in the communicative acts of insult and associated with the semantic field “Human”.

A criminal jargon marked by a high level of expressivity (similar to that of swear and vulgar words) may have an extremely negative and even hazardous psychological effect. More often than not, this effect goes beyond the boundaries of this or that criminal group and spreads rapidly in a society sweeping across mostly the teenage and young adults' population (in order to stand out and assert themselves among their peers the young people tend to emulate the manners of certain “criminal bosses”). In due course, via the mass media, fiction, movies, radio stations the wave of a harmful influence of the criminal jargon comes up in everyday life. According to the researchers of this sociolect, “...harm inflicted by criminal jargon lies in teaching a person to think in criminal terms as well as in instilling perverted views and beliefs in his or her mind, such as aversion to labour, cruelty and barbarity, glorification of the criminal lifestyle, thievish ingenuity, the cult of power and contempt for global human values and morality.” Criminal jargon “subverts and falsifies the legal consciousness of an individual”. Moreover, “in criminal jargon there is hardly a neutrally colored lexical unit”. The words of this non-literary layer are usually “pronounced caustically, with an explicit disdain”. Those who use them seek to stun, to sting, to discredit, and downgrade a person (Pirozhkov, 1994).

Therefore, this variety of jargon has an unambiguously invective connotation, and, consequently, even if it is not targeted at a specific recipient, it causes a lot of people (especially those who were reared with a respect for a language culture and the rules of etiquette, for example, such community groups as intellectuals, seniors) to feel the insult and emotional discomfort. The invectives as expressive linguistic means may exert some negative action not only on the mental health of the individual, but also on the mass consciousness. Through the use of specific linguistic means and techniques, we can put and store some information in the individual's subconscious so that it (the information) should become an integral part of human psychic essence (Formanova, 2013, p. 126). The invectives, no matter how differently they are verbalized, can be effective tools of a suggestive impact on a society. Suggestion is understood as a premeditated conscious effect on the subconscious of a person or a group of people in order to change their (physical or mental) state or attitude to the issue, as well as to generate a disposition toward specific actions, and an inclination to emulate, that is to evoke in the other person's mind a desire to become a copy of the anchorage (Sidorenko, 1997, p. 129-131).

The unreasonable expansion of insulting and swear vocabulary can be accounted for, first, by the fact that the young people trying to enhance the expressiveness of their speech want to show off their antics, to attract the others' attention or to distinguish themselves from “the crowd”; second, by the jargonization and criminalization of the language in modern fiction and in various communication media (online media outlets, TV programs, including political talk shows), and, finally, by the language used by the speakers in high-profile state institutions (in the abode of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, including).

All these tendencies not only downplay the intellectual values, but also impress on the recipients the idea of profanity as a social communicative standard worthy of imitation and dissemination among the people of different ages and social strata, especially the youth. According to Voitsekhivska, the wide spread occurence of the criminal, thieves' and prison jargon stems primarily from criminalization of public life and social mind as well as from a desire to emulate a fake “figure of authority” (Voitsekhivska, 2014, p. 330). Unlike the young people who use the invectives and jargonisms purely during their oral communication with their peers, the people of specific professions or occupations resort to this layer of vocabulary when talking to their colleagues; at the same time, the invectives used by the criminals and substance abusers can be heard predominantly in their criminal (deviant) groups; the authors of the mass media and writers of fiction, however, can affect the consciousness or subconscious of the people of all generations and all socioprofessional communities by making an excessive and sometimes stylistically unjustifiable use of the words and phrases of this layer of the vocabulary.

To a lot of segments of the population, especially, to the senior citizens, the accumulation of such a vocabulary (associated with the growth of verbal aggression) in a society, in general, and in mass media, in particular, is a cause of a number of negative psycho-emotional states, a psychological intenseness and even the feeling of insult (bitterness, emotional pain, depression, humiliation), and depersonalization. After all, an extensively used pejorative invective vocabulary is a reflection of the destructive consciousness of society; this tendency produces the impression of a dominant role of vulgarity, aggression, hatred, world's brutality, elimination the basic standards of morality and language etiquette, which points to symptoms of social deterioration and regression.

Thus, the use of invective vocabulary in the mass media and fiction can be justified only if it serves s specific communicative and stylistic function (to provide a negative stance on the characters and their behavior; to represent the specificity of the character's manner of speech; to achieve an ironic or satirical effect). An aggressive insulting profanity in a public space is unacceptable because it promotes violence, cruelty, disparagement of another person's honour and dignity, downplays intellectual and spiritual values, and recklessly affects the assimilation of the invectives into a society and their dissemination primarily among young people. To completely get rid of profanity is not an easy endeavour. The possibility exists, though, of reducing its intensity through the use of modern methods and training workshops as the modalities of individual psychological impact. The procedure is described, for example, in the paper by Makarenko (2013).

Conclusions

Despite their negative impact on the minds of recipients, the invectives make up a dynamic share of the lexical space of the Ukrainian language, in general, and mass communicative tools, in particular. On the one hand, they add expressiveness and eccentricity to the language; on the other hand, they vulgarize various types of discourse, impart an aggressive and insulting tone to a discourse and inflict a profound affront upon a person. The anthropocentric invective vocabulary covers a large and diverse range of colloquial, pejorative, derogatory, jargon, slang, obscene, swear, rude, vulgar, contemptuous lexical units. They either acquire an insulting meaning contextually or incorporate it in their component structures. A thematic scope of the invectives reflects an individual's physical, psycho-emotional, moral and ethical qualities as well as her or his ethnic, socio-professional, gender, religious, and political affiliation. Such a vocabulary is targeted at providing an insulting characterization of external and internal features of the addressee with a varying intensity of a psychological impact. The latter depends, for one thing, on a semantic content and a target of the insulting expression and, for another, on recipient's age, individual and psychological characteristics, level of civility, mindset, temperament, stress resistance and social status.

lexical psychological invective vocabulary

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