Social Roles as a Construct of Ecological Interaction: Diachronic Aspects

Abstract

Ecolinguistics contributes to the understanding of how language serves to shape, nurture, influence, or destroy human relationships. Language is a part of the living world that allows directing the human activity. The focus of this study lies in researching of a human speech behavior, which displays the connection between the past, present and future of the humanity, and demonstrates the relationship between language, essence of life and human consciousness. The results of such interpretation find their presentation in the system of ideas concerning the world and, as a result, shape the principles of human interaction, which present a unique social and historical experience. The research material consists of dialogic fragments from fiction and film scripts of the XX and XXI centuries, which illustrate the changes in verbal and non-verbal behaviour of a discursive personality while implementing different social roles in the process of communication. The analysis of the differences in the speech repertoire of a discursive personality when performing various social roles is based on the principles of ecolinguistics, discourse theory and linguopragmatics. The methodological basis allowed to compare the rules of human interaction in the XX and XXI centuries and to project the direction of these changes in the human view of the world in future.