Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences / Letters to the Editor of a “Thick” Magazine: Ethics, Pragmatics, and Pragmasemantics of Politeness

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Issue
Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2026 19 (3)
Authors
Govorukhina, Iuliia A.
Contact information
Govorukhina, Iuliia A. : Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad, Russian Federation)
Keywords
contemporary literary critics; literary magazine; “thick” magazine; readers’ letters; letters to the editor; politeness; verbal aggression; pragmatics of politeness; pragmasemantics
Abstract

The article focuses on a letter to the editor as a judgment of a non-professional reader. Once published, it becomes a statement of the magazine, is endowed with additional addressees, serves as a means of accumulating symbolic capital and a weapon in polemics. The study analyzes politeness formulas in the letters as strategies for shaping an appealing image of the magazine and its in-group readership, delivering veiled insults to opponents, and signaling the existence of ideological opposition between magazines. Letters published in Nash Sovremennik construct an idealized image of a flawless, genuinely popular magazine. In contrast, letters of liberal magazines are sharper and more emotionally diverse, they are published as evidence of a liberal position, openness, and democracy. The pragmatic- semantic perspective of understanding the forms of politeness made it possible to identify the effect of blurring the subject, to comprehend the phenomenon of creating a letter not by the subject, but by the context in which a certain set of scenarios exist

Pages
649–659
EDN
IJLASS
Paper at repository of SibFU
https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/158224

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