This paper discusses the issue of discursive construction of an immigrant image in media discourse on the basis of the content on the Immigrants in EU Facebook group and Daily Mail publications. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the authors claim that the image of the immigrant can be viewed as a discursive construct, and the main discursive strategies involved in its construction include the reference strategy and the prediction strategy. As a result of the analysis, the so called CDA categories (topic blocks) underlying the formation of the immigrant figure, are identified and illustrated through examples, the need for further study of the social media discourse as part of critical discourse analysis is justified. The relevance of such study is due to the growing research interest in discursive construction of the figure of the immigrant in media discourse, since it underpins the definition of discourse as a form of social practice, not only reflecting processes in the society, but also exerting a reciprocal effect on them. The use of both verbal and non-verbal means in the media texts under study reflects the intention of the authors of the messages to use all possible communication channels when constructing the image of the immigrant. The results show that the dichotomy of “friends and foes” is being formed and maintained by the British Daily Mail newspaper, while the members of the Immigrants in EU group try to mitigate the conflict between immigrants and indigenous people.

   This paper aims to analyse the lexical aspect of foreign criticism of Russia at the early stages of establishing international relations. It focuses on the role of pejorative lexis and phraseology used by the English diplomat Giles Fletcher to criticize Russian social, cultural and common phenomena in his treatise On the Russe Common Wealth written in 1591. The research establishes the main objects and grounds of the country’s negative evaluativity as described by the author, identifies the diverse lexical means containing inherent negative evaluations, and reveals their functions in the text. The criticism is underpinned by the author’s pragmatism against the back-ground of deteriorating Anglo–Russian relations caused by the competing interests of the two nations. Our subject here is late-16^th-century English society represented by Giles Fletcher, a public officer and politician. He directs his criticism at specific individuals and groups (monarchs, nobility, peasantry, clergy, etc.), the national character of the Russian people, and social institutions (administration, the political regime, law enforcement and judicial system, finance and economy, the Orthodox Church, etc.). The criticism of Russian realities in the treatise mostly manifests itself at the lexical level by virtue of the extensive use of pejorative substantives and metaphoric idioms. In functional terms, negative evaluativity at the lexical level express the author’s emotions and present the characteristics of individuals and ethno-specific phenomena.

   The article aims to analyse the cognitive aspect of educational discourse conducted in a non-native language, specifically the effect of cultural competence on linguistic competence in the process of speech generation. The author considers the problem of transmitting knowledge about the world by means of language from generation to generation in the mental and linguistic ontogenesis. In contrast to the prevailing opinion, the author proves that language itself does not contain information accumulated within linguoculture, but only facilitates the transfer of cultural information that is not derived from language. It is drawn from other sources: innate cognitive programs, patterns of behaviour, reactions to external stimuli, mental strategies, directly from the surrounding extralinguistic reality through senses, etc. The author also describes the means and methods of fixing cultural knowledge in language structure. The research is based on English and Russian language material.

   There are several signs that contain “diplomatic” semantics among the 540 most ancient radicals of Chinese writing, presented in the Shuo Wen Jie Zi dictionary (1st century AD, Han era). Before the dictionary was created, Chinese writing had already existed for several thousand years. Therefore, some researchers (Zou Xiaoli, 2007; Oshanin, 1943) consider that the etymologies of the radicals in Shuo Wen were formulated under the influence of the later eras and are often erroneous. Attempts are made to verify the etymologies of these signs with “diplomatic” semantics by comparing them with the more ancient forms jiaguwen and jinwen, discovered and scientifically described only in the 20th century. Such a comparison and interpretation will reveal the probable correct etymologies of the analysed radicals of the Shuo Wen dictionary and verify them. In addition, the study will shed light on the beginning of diplomacy in ancient China. The article also touches upon the problem of etymological analysis in a language with an ideographic type of writing, which is carried out not at the level of morphology, as in European languages, but at the level of hieroglyphic sign graphics. The problem of semantics and etymology of radicals was considered mainly by Chinese scientists (Zou Xiaoli, 2007; Wang Fengyang, 2011, etc.), while in European linguistics, the problem was studied only fragmentarily (Kondrashevsky, 1982; Karasyova, 2019; Dictionary of Etymologies, 2019). The radicals “with diplomatic” semantics analysed in this article have not been subjected to special study. The purpose of the present article is to verify the etymology of a number of radicals that contain “diplomatic” semantics in the ancient Chinese dictionary Shuo Wen Jie Zi; consider information about the dictionary, its basic radicals and their semantics; briefly describe the features of etymological analysis in general, and in the Chinese language in particular; and compare the definitions of these radicals in various etymological dictionaries, thus verifying the etymologies presented in the Shuo Wen Jie Zi dictionary.

   The main purpose of this article is to consider certain genres of natural writing. The very concept of “natural written speech” at the present time has not received a complete and comprehensive interpretation. However, there are fewer examples of it today. In part, the disappearance of the genres of natural writing is associated with the onset of the digital era, when people stopped writing physical letters and notes, ceased making notes for themselves, and no longer annotated and signed photographs. Many genres of writing are capable of giving an idea of the writer in the same way as the varieties of oral speech. In natural written speech, some features of personality and linguistic personality are manifested. The aim of the research, presented in the article, is to analyse inscriptions on photographs from the viewpoint of their lexis, punctuation, and graphical layout to define the chronotope and personal characteristics of the authors of this genre of written discourse. The focus is on the linguistic means of inscriptions on photos, i. e., the graphic, lexical, derivational and other features. In the process of analysing the inscriptions, the main varieties of this genre were identified: inscriptions made as a memento; inscriptions that represent the definition of an event or time and place; inscriptions made to convey information to close relatives, etc. In addition, the inscriptions on photographs can be classified by keywords, if possible, determining the chronotope, by the use of graphic means, by the location of the inscription itself in the photograph. To a certain extent, the inscriptions made on photographs reflect the personality traits of a person. The analysis shows that inscriptions on photographs were a forerunner of sorts of personal pages on Instagram.

   The present article describes the specifics, principles and methods of synergetics as a promising area of modern research. Synergetics is presented by the author as a holistic integral paradigm used in many sciences, which confirms its interdisciplinary and even universal nature. The object of this paradigm is the interaction of complex systems, and since the mere concept of “system” is widely used in many scientific fields, the relevance of synergetics is beyond doubt. The author describes the main characteristics of the structure and functioning of a system. The key concepts of synergetics and their explanation are also given. Further, the article discusses the branches of linguistics that are based on the principles of synergetics – linguosynergetics and functional linguosynergetics as a variety of it. Since the study of text and discourse and their parameters as complex systems is of particular interest to many linguists, linguosynergetics has become one of the most indemand scientific paradigms in this area of research. The author points out the objectives and tasks of linguistic synergetics, and functional linguosynergetics in particular, as well as their basic concepts, principles and methods. Attention is also paid to the functioning of linguistic means and the formation and interpretation of meaning depending on certain discursive space. The author comes to the conclusion that, thanks to synergetics, language can be studied from specific angles, and the application of its principles greatly contributes to the theory of the evolution of language. Linguosynergetics provides ample opportunities for describing language/text/discourse as a complex, dynamic, open system, and functional linguosynergetics, in turn, helps describe the features of its functioning and evolution.