Chula v Gosdume (Verbal abuse in the Russian State Duma)

Abstract

In my paper I analyse implicit and explicit ways of verbal abuse in parliamentary discourse which are illustrated by excerpts from the official State Duma transcripts. The first section explores the decoding of various implicit types of speech such as ironical and rhetoric utterances or non-conventional (not lexicalised) metaphorical and metonymical uses by means of Gricean conversational implicatures; moreover, other means (notably presuppositions) that do not trigger a Griecean interpretation are discussed. The second section focuses on direct invectives (both unfiltered and mitigated) addressed to individual deputies or entire fractions. The whole overview aims at providing a global idea of the range of possible manifestations of verbal aggression; moreover, it sheds some light on the specific management of verbal abuse in parliamentary discourse, cf. the impossibility of counters to verbal attacks due to the strict regulation of the turn-taking system or the frequent absence of sanctions on verbal misbehaviour.