Text clips expressing objection under the guise of agreement as a means of introducing the argument

Russian philologists label the word deystvitel'no (really, indeed) as an adverb, a particle or a parenthetical modal word, but it also can be defined as a text clip connecting the phrases or parts of the text. The common meaning of the word deystvitel'no is confirmation of the truth of information. Along with the independent functioning of the word deystvitel'no in the text there is a construction made by a combination of two components: the word deystvitel'no and the conjunction no (but). Together, these two components create a special construction with contradictory semantics: on the one hand, the speaker agrees, confirms the truth of the facts expressed in pre-context, on the other hand, s/he expresses an objection. Thus, we get a text implementation of the strategy characteristic for scientific discourse: objection under the guise of agreement. Connection of the opposite cognitive actions can be explained by the features of scientific research: a scientist makes an assumption and then tries to deny it. The dialogical way of thinking is also typical for the scientific text. Researchers T.V. Bulygina and A.M. Shmeliov note that the construction expresses agreement, but it also is used to make a reservation, or to focus on details that are questionable. Along with the word deystvitel'no, A Guide to Discursive Words allocates an entire group of units expressing the idea of reality with words: bezuslovno, bessporno, konechno, nesomnenno (unquestionably, certainly, undoubtedly). We hypothesized that these units can create a construction with word no, like the word deystvitel'no. We tested our hypothesis on the material of scientific papers by M.M. Bakhtin (''From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse", ''The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art", Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics, ''Rabelais and Gogol", ''Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance", ''Discourse in the Novel", "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel"), and we found out realization of the following constructions: deystvitel'no + no/odnako; bessporno + no; nesomnenno + no; konechno + no/odnako; bezuslovno + no/odnako. The semantic nuances of these different constructions are due to the individual meaning of the first word (deystvitel'no, bessporno, nesomnenno, konechno, bezuslovno), but they can equally be used to express the following gradation: 1) the speaker completely refutes a commonly known position or the position of a particular opponent (full retraction, agreement is used to express politeness); 2) the speaker partially disagrees with the position of the opponent; the construction is used to clearly identify the areas of agreement and the areas of objections that require clarification; 3) the speaker agrees with the opponent, but considers it necessary to draw attention to particular cases, clarifies the details.

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