The Russian Verb Forms Smotrite and Slushayte as Markers of Power and Solidarity

The study deals with the way imperative forms of Russian visual and auditory perception verbs function as discourse markers in contemporary spoken Russian. The data is drawn from the Russian National Corpus. The article focuses on the forms smotri(te) (‘look') and slushay(te) (‘listen') (both formal and intimate), but also extends to analogous forms of other verbs of seeing and hearing that can occur as discourse markers, such as vidite, slyshite, poslushayte, etc. In spoken discourse, all of them perform a metacommunicative function of attracting attention and keeping the interlocutor involved, but there are important differences concerning their position in the utterance, semantic and pragmatic features. Both smotrite and slushayte are normally placed at the beginning of a clause, which may not be the case with other markers. But while sharing the same position, their functional semantics differs quite noticeably. Smotrite is commonly used in institutional communication, whereas slushayte is more typical of everyday informal conversations. A rough-and-ready analysis reveals that smotrite occurs mainly in informative speech acts. It is produced by speakers who are considered more knowledgeable and competent, their role in communication being to provide information, make explanations, put forward ideas, express opinions. As it stands, such participants are assigned a higher status linked with the notion of power (power of information). The marker slushayte, on the contrary, signals equality and is associated with the opposite end of the well-known power-solidarity scale. Its central role is calling for attention, and in some contexts it can also mark the introduction of a new topic. These findings support Eve Sweetser's claim concerning the semantic linkups between vision and intellection, on the one hand, and hearing and receptivity, on the other. The lexicalization process by which the imperative forms in question became discourse markers did not occur at the same time. Thus, while there is evidence that slushayte, slyshite, vidite have been used as discourse markers for many decades, this is not the case with smotrite. The latter did not emerge until quite recently, the earliest occurrences in the corpus dating back to the late 1990s. It may be claimed that it was the systemic need that underlay its coinage. With smotrite added to the above units, the system oI the Russian verbs oI seeing and hearing, as well as the system oI corresponding discourse markers, has become complete and well-integrated.

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