Pragmatics of evaluation in the aspect of the corpus-discourse analysis: the model «tot yeshche / yeshche tot X» in Russian colloquial speech

The article examines the semantic and pragmatic features of the discursive implementation of Russian colloquial collocations, which reflects various evaluative effects. The focus of the study is the expressive model «tot yeshche / yeshche tot X». The corpus-discourse analysis is used. The study is based on examples of usage extracted from the main corpus in the Russian National Corpus. The study reveals a set of contexts in 200 units, obtained by the method of continuous sampling and marked in accordance with the presence of implicit positive/negative evaluation or its absence. In addition to the possibility of negative-evaluative uses of the analyzed model, accompanied by expressions of disapproval, and its positive-evaluative uses, accompanied by expressions of approval or admiration, reflected in scientific literature and lexicographic sources, the presented corpus-discourse analysis revealed another group of uses, neutral in terms of evaluation, but at the same time, having emotional-expressive marking: ʽsignificantly distinguished by characteristics, properties, features inherent in the defined conceptʼ. Thus, it is shown that the model «tot yeshche / yeshche tot X» acts as a shifter, or as a pragmatic operator of intensification, indicating a violation of the speaker’s norm, that is, denoting something out of the ordinary (in a good, bad or neutral sense). Particular attention is paid to cases of euphemistic use of this model, exploiting the figure of silence. The quantitative analysis presented in the final stage of the study allowed us to identify a significant predominance of negative-evaluative uses of the analyzed model in the speech practice of modern native speakers of Russian. It is concluded that in most cases the expression «tot yeshche / yeshche tot» might be considered as a representative context for expressing a specific ambiguous type of value in the Russian culture as pseudo-value (false, imaginary value).