In 2020, the research team carried out the following work and obtained the results:
I.We suggest describing a discourse as a result of the application of specific constructive and interpretive procedures.
The conditions determine the typology of discourses due to which the following correlations are possible: language (system) - text, text - context, language - communicative practices, text - a domain of reference. These conditions and procedures can be identified with a discourse. These aspects appear as a semiotic border, a relationship of differentiation, and, at the same time, connection and interpenetration between different domains. It becomes possible to represent discourse in the form of an observable object.
Special attention was paid to the problem: what is a context as a meaning-forming factor. Due to this, we systematize conceptions of possibilities and limitations of contextualization while analyzing verbal speech structures and causes of incorrect contextualization. Some key provisions were operationalized. It made it possible to analyze experimentally contextual factors of constructing and reconstructing the meaning of the text and determining a weight of various components of the dispositive when categorizing the meaning of the text within the framework of multiple logic of justification. A massive online experiment, "How we read the news," was conducted to check them.
As a particular type of discursive practice, the concept of parrhesia and its modern manifestations in social networks were considered. The study's focus was on the conditions for the transition from the political and legal areas to the moral and religious ones and the transformation of the utterance regime.
Another direction of approbation and development of theoretical positions was the historical-comparative analysis of key concepts in the formation of discourses and discursive practices and their transformations into various socio- and ethnocultural contexts. Taking as the cases the key ideologemes ("freedom," "people," etc.), the processes of meaning formation in the Russian socio-political discourse of the 19th century were considered.
II. The general patterns of semantic structuring of texts and discourses identified at the previous stages were concretized down to the level of lexical units and concepts.
Thus, it became possible to describe the characteristics of various socio-cultural practices, mechanisms, and contexts of meaning formation and introduce their lingua-semiotic and logical-semantic models. We considered causes and conditions for incorrect contextualization leading to misunderstanding and semantic conflicts in society. Misunderstanding arises as a rupture between contexts of production and reception of an utterance. It differs from the variability of interpretation, a natural result, and an interpersonal communication's organic property. Social conflict is associated with the politicization of utterance and the advancement of an ideological context as a determinant of meaning. A politicization creates multiple connotations and social meanings while generating meaning is transformed into a search for implicit meanings. Similar phenomena were detected in the markup of political cyberbullying. Based on a massive online survey data, we carried out the statistical relationship between components of the disposition of the communicative situation and lexical units of an interpreted text.
The analysis of contexts and patterns of meaning formation was expanded regarding mechanisms of interaction between narration and performative. And symbolic historical memory in its dynamics (The image of Peter the Great). Specific forms of meaning-forming narration were realized and institutionalized when creating a projective philosophical dictionary. Continuing the research of "word as a deed," we considered the semantics of expressives as latent behavioral frames. One of the most relevant modern political communication practices is the convolution of political slogans into lexical blends was identified. Attention was paid to the typology of transformations of the syntactic structure of a performative statement-slogan.
III. We continued research related to the study of additional (modal and multimodal) dimensions of semiosis associated with the message's functioning in the modern information space.
Developing of Luhmann's ideas, the possibility of dynamic operations of juxtaposing the communicative and cognitive characteristics of a sign was demonstrated - as a medium between consciousness and communication, and it makes it possible to link together various aspects of meaning formation (language, culture, cognition, social institutions). In this vein, we analyzed the main stages of social semiotics development, understood as a discipline studying processes of the formation of meanings and communication in society. We identified the main characteristics of its methodological interaction with related disciplines: the semiotics of culture and sociolinguistics. The differences between them lie in various aspects of the generation of meaning and communication and the functional characteristics of communicative goal-setting.
The concept of meta-pragmatics, the reflexive metalanguage aspect of communication, was proposed. Understanding in social space is formed as a result of the interaction of a text, context of its creation and reception, and pretext as a sociocultural background; The focus is shifted from the analysis of a cooperative interaction (according to Grice) to e construction of meaning in a common shared / non-shared context. Procedures providing an opportunity to combine theoretical models of semantic syntax with hermeneutic procedures were proposed.
IV. We have considered how, in the socio-cultural space, the participants of communication express and interpret meanings using a visual resource, as well as in which way socially significant meanings are associated with the image included in a text and a communicative situation.
From these stands, we clarified methodological foundations of socio-semiotic analysis in synthesis with the semiotics of culture, interactional sociolinguistics, and metapragmatics. Functional characteristics and tools for the implementation of meaning formation in media articulation and social and national-cultural speech-influencing practices have been identified; the influence of the value-cultural matrix on the mechanisms of perception and interpretation of information was considered.
Based on the works of A. Platonov, the content of a unique semantic picture of the world was presented. We considered the possibilities of its application to the understanding of modern radical civilizational transformations and the positioning of an individual in transforming reality. Within the semiotics of behavior, a detailed study of the conceptual foundations of lifebuilding forms of the 1830s - 70s was undertaken.
Using comparative analysis, the features of the perception of information in Russian and Polish public discourse were examined; it revealed how culturally determined value models and mental frames affect narrative practices. Using visual images of Kaliningrad and Gdansk, a contrastive analysis of inter-semiotic, textual, and visual tools for creating meanings in urban national practices was carried out. Based on the material of the interpretation of the holiday by foreigners, we analyzed the influence of a value-cultural matrix and latent background on comprehending and categorizing the perceived information.
V. We investigated the problems of describing/constructing an ontology of deterritorialized social processes ("imaginary worlds," "social imaginary") and constructed identities, as well as practices of virtual performance in creating identities.
It was shown that consideration of the problems of the anthropology of digitized reality reveals the capacity of social semiotics to be used as an interdisciplinary platform for an analysis of social systems, institutions, processes as sign systems in dynamics of their development. In the practice of the projective vocabulary, a model for constructing imaginable worlds was presented, realizing the possibilities of meaning creation, at the same time combining the divergence of points of view, but at the same time using common terminological and conceptual resources. On considering Kaliningrad and Gdansk, the peculiarity, problems, and possibilities of large cities' cultural positioning are revealed; it is understood as a system of generation, selection, storage, transmitting, reproduction, and development of social experience, which is created through branding narration.
We carried out to identify the relationship between the axiological categories of truth and fake in the digital information space. We clarified semantic and pragmatic characteristics of fakes and fake news and their possible legal and informational measures for their prevention. The rhetorical and pragmatic aspects of verbal threats (argumentum ad mortem) were analyzed; this was supplemented by examining existing approaches to cyber-threats.
VI. We described semiotic and communicative mechanisms in the so-called "new media" for distinguishing between "ours" and "alien."
Particular attention was paid to the problems of informational and other threats, ways of their neutralization were suggested. It was shown in what form acute social problems (xenophobia, migration, extremism, sexism) are reflected in social mythology and are manifested in neologisms and Internet memes. The study of the dynamics of public discourse content in the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic became a response to the current processes.
We investigated such forms of collective (or institutional) identity (as a region and a university) constructed mostly through information technologies. As historical cases, we analyzed the strategy and practice of self-description in the texts of Lev Bakst.
VII. We continue to conduct the conceptual analysis of semiotic tools for constructing national and political identities in the Russian-language political communicative space of the Russian Empire of the 19th century.
The concepts of "people" and "compatriots" were considered; their semantic potential, heterogeneity, and transformation were reconstructed.
VIII. We investigated cognitive and semiotic resources involved in the textualization of popular motives, plots, images associated with the representation of the oppositions "vertical and horizontal" and "far - close" in modern media culture, as well as a classification of the most frequent memes that implement these binary categories. In addition to memetics, the “vertical type of communication” analysis was also carried out concerning the multi-intentional situation of justification in an explanatory note genre.
The research team in 2020 published:
two monographs;
prepare for publication three collective monographs, and three special issues of scientific journals (the core of the RSCI - WoS RSCI);
in Russian and international scientific journals we published 52 articles have been published (of which 15 are indexed in WoS - Scopus databases);
43 reports were presented at international and Russian conferences and seminars.
Scientific cooperation with leading Russian and foreign centers was continued. The results of the project are posted on a number of sites and repositories. We suggested practical recommendations related to using the results in the academic and educational fields, increasing communication effectiveness, countering cyber threats, and disinformation.