CC BY
17
DOI: 10.24234/wisdom. \'3i2.837 Elena MALYUGA
RUDN University, Moscow, Russia E-mail: malyuga-en@rudn.ru
Gayane PETROSYAN
RUDN University, Moscow, Russia E-mail : petrosyangayane2015 @gmail.com
SPEECH AGGRESSION IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATION: THE GENDER ASPECT IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE
Abstract
The article sheds light on the means of verbal aggression expression as used in the speech of female and male native speakers of English in corporate communication within the gender framework in the philosophy of culture. The means of expression are analysed using the transcripts of talks and business meetings to single out their common use patterns. Research methodology is premised on the philosophical approach to culture, statistical data analysis, methods of continuous sampling, definitional analysis, textual analysis, component analysis and complex analysis of vocabulary units, as well as lexical and stylistic analysis. Upon examining the peculiarities of speech aggression, the authors address gender differences in speech act production. The study demonstrates the significance of the gender factor in implementing verbal behaviour strategies in cases of verbal aggression within corporate communication while also revealing some significant differences in male and female speech aggression in corporate communication (negative connotations in women's and men's speech).
Keywords: philosophy of culture, speech aggression, philosophy of gender studies, women's speech, men's speech, gender factor, communicative linguistics, lexis, corporate communication.
Introduction
Problem Statement
At present, a critical methodological problem in modern science is the reflection of goals and motives of human gender activity in the socio-cultural sphere and the study of gender concepts and principles. The philosophy of gender studies produces an ever-expanding methodological knowledge. Its true meaning and purpose reveal a connection with the common interests of gender societies.
Acquiring cultural influence, the philosophy of gender studies should turn the knowledge of worldview into a valuable approach and make it exoteric. In this regard, the philosophy of gender
studies within the philosophical framework of culture is an emerging humanitarian discipline that has been formed in recent decades and requires a verified conceptual apparatus.
In the social and human sciences, the very concepts of gender studies and the philosophy of gender studies are currently being clarified. Gender studies concern genders and social gender existence, including the evolution of their social statuses. The philosophy of gender studies can be defined as rational critical thinking about a person's path as a subject of gender and the nature of gender in the universe, as well as comprehension of truth. This is free creative thinking, tapping into the essence of phenomena, which considers gender knowledge infinite.
The need for a clearer understanding of speech strategies in the corporate communication field is growing in the context of global economic and humanitarian interaction between countries. In international teams of large business corporations, the language of communication is English as a lingua franca.
Thus, the attempt to consider the speech behaviour of British and American participants in cross-cultural communication is essential, particularly nowadays when the fusion of people, languages and cultures has reached an unprecedented level and is bringing the problem of encouraging tolerance to various cultures to the foreground. As speech behaviour is primarily dialogue-based, dialogue forms demonstrate the social nature of the language since "language is being interpreted as an integral socio-cultural entity reflecting the features of a certain ethnic group as a carrier of a specific culture and outlining this culture as a distinctive heritage different from other civilisations" (Malyuga, Krouglov, & Tomalin, 2018, p. 567). Social etiquette contains inherent social language information. Speech aggression has become part and parcel of modern times, actively making its way into politics and easily fitting into interpersonal relations, with speakers demonstrating their disrespect towards each other and trying to impress and entertain the viewers (Khlopotunov, 2019).
Corporate communication is interpreted as activities related to the management and organisation of all internal and external communications and aimed at creating a favourable image of a company. In fact, corporate communication is any type of communication emanating from a corporate organisation and addressed to its employees and partners to maintain a reputation and a company brand.
At the same time, in the speech interaction process, male and female communicants can demonstrate different strategies for expressing their emotional states. The gender factor in corporate communication has been studied for a long time, but so far, no studies have been conducted on the correlation of gender characteristics in speech
aggression manifestations. A more comprehensive understanding of the forms, strategies, and ways of verbal aggression manifestation in corporate communication, as studied from the gender point of view, helps develop new methods for levelling many conflict situations between male and female employees in corporate communication.
The importance of the correct company image, obviously, correlates with the need to use appropriate speech strategies in corporate communication. In this sense, the employees' interaction, which allows for gender and speech aggression, often becomes a reliable aid, avoiding the use of words and expressions that may be perceived as offensive or, as McGee (2019) calls them, "potentially face-threatening speech acts which can have quite a serious impact on social relationships" (p. 76). In other words, speech aggression in the women's and men's speech in corporate entities is a paramount goal for the companies' leadership towards improving corporate communication.
From the perspectives of philosophy and gender studies, corporate culture emerges in the context of a historically developed worldview of the genders. Of course, the theoretical and ideological components should be considered in the scientific measurement of gender culture. World-view is an essential component of the philosophical exploration of the world.
Speech behaviour expresses the dominants of the worldview. The philosophy and methodology of gender studies allow considering the ideological aspect of the goals and motives of human gender activity in the socio-cultural sphere using the example of verbal aggression. In corporate communication, gender is problematised to indicate the direction of the search for answers to emerging questions (this is the ideological beginning of the philosophy of gender studies). Gender problems are of the general type as they concern all living people and affect aspects of gender throughout their lives.
The worldview has been diversely present in the philosophy of gender studies in the past and
present. The philosophy of gender studies addresses the essence of the gender aspects as the worldview. A system of views on the world and man's place in it inevitably includes gender questions. At the same time, speech behaviour undoubtedly differs between the genders. While politeness, as a social framework for corporate culture, is almost always the same (a set of patterns, politeness formulas and rules of speech etiquette), then gender differences are most clearly expressed in verbal aggression acts, which are often impulsive and variable from a linguistic point of view.
Moreover, the main speech aggression characteristic is the discrediting of the communicant in the eyes of others. Available research has been able to identify several basic interpretations of speech aggression as a concept:
1. threatening or ill-wishing directed at a specific person or group of people (active direct speech aggression) (Malyuga, Maksimova, & Ivanova, 2019, p. 310);
2. imposing on others a negative opinion about someone or something (active indirect speech aggression) (Rugen, 2019, p. 15);
3. verbal expression of negative feelings, emotions, and intentions in an unacceptable form in a specific interaction setting (Orlova, Radyuk, Oreshko, & Ivanova, 2019, p. 809);
4. a negative or critical attitude of the speaker towards the addressee expressed-through linguistic means (Malyuga, Maksimova, & Ivanova, 2019, p. 311).
Studies also distinguish two main speech aggression forms, the classification criterion of which is the speech intensity exposure: open (explicit) form (includes insults and threats) and latent (implicit) form (hint, reproach, hidden sarcasm). At the same time, both forms of verbal aggression are aimed at evoking negative feelings and emotions towards the object with the help of intentionally chosen linguistic means (Beger, 2018, p. 502). Among these means are an insult, a threat, a gross demand, a gross rejection, a hostile remark, censure (reproach, accusation), mockery (irony, sarcasm), and a complaint
(Schmidt & Rennhak, 2020, p. 119).
Despite the variety of interpretations of speech aggression as a concept and the detailed classification, the significance of the gender factor in the ways and forms of speech aggression manifests itself in corporate communication has not yet been clarified in the scientific literature.
Goal, Objectives, and Hypothesis of the Study
The article covers aggression from the perspective of communicative linguistics, based on gender peculiarities of its expression. Speech aggression is included in the research of theoretical communication and speech interaction problems.
The research goal is to study the philosophical foundations of gender culture using the example of male and female speech activity. It is helpful to consider the gender aspects of the worldview in the study of narrowly specialised issues -namely, aggressive verbal behaviour in a corporate environment. That said, from the viewpoint of gender studies and the philosophy of culture, the corporate environment is an external field for individuals in which they project their speech behaviour based on gender differences. Where it is necessary to develop mechanisms for the implementation of gender equality for the representatives of genders, members of their families, and gender societies, it is necessary to study positive social experiences and negative practices, including examples of verbal aggression of men and women.
The research objectives can be formulated as follows: (1) to reveal the primary means of verbal aggression manifestations in the speech of English-speaking women and men in corporate communication; (2) to indicate the level of emotional intensity in the expression of speech aggression in the female and male speech in the process of corporate communication; and (3) to analyse the means of speech aggression employed by men and women in the process of corporate communication in terms of the frequency of their use.
The research hypothesis posits that male par-
ticipants in corporate communication prefer an open form of speech aggression with low emotional intensity, while female communicants prefer a covert form of speech aggression with high emotional intensity.
Theoretical Background
The historiography of the research problem is quite extensive, with the ideological theme of the philosophy of gender studies reflected in the works that analyse the key concepts and institutions of the socio-cultural development of a society (Matherne, 2021). Turning to the gender worldview aspects, we should also mention studies on the cognitive and emotional-volitional components of gender behaviour. This preeminently concerns women's and men's status in the family, society, at work, and a cognitive component of gender cognition.
Innis (2016) posits that gender knowledge reflects the cognitive and intellectual side of the worldview through gender. The very concept of gender has historically become the unit of measurement in the knowledge of gender reality: for example, gender equality, women's issues, men's issues, women's movements, etc. Social activity contributes to the development of gender concepts. Moreover, gender-based apprehension of cognition is verbal behaviour for the purposes of this study.
A prominent place among the studies belongs to gender judgments and inferences. For example, gender judgment is construed as a thought that either affirms or denies a gendered subject, gender phenomenon or gender process (Kem-ling, 2020; Crane, 2021; Vlasova & Makieshyna, 2018) and is expressed in the form of a proposal. As a thought that affirms or denies the existence of a connection between objects of gender reality, gender judgment can be true or false (untrue).
Gender judgments are important material for the intellectual activity of a gendered subject. A gender inference is reasoning in which a new gender judgment is derived from one or more gender judgments. Such an algorithm is also in-
herent in speech behaviour with a gender basis.
In particular, the classical communicative approach to the study of speech aggression is presented in the works by supporters of Lakoff s (1975) speech acts theory, whose research is mainly devoted to the lexical and stylistic analysis of speech aggression (see Orlova, Radyuk, Oreshko, & Ivanova, 2019; Potapchuk, 2016). Some aspects of speech aggression are considered within the framework of the corporate communication theory (see Oviedo, 2019). The specificity of speech aggression within the framework of corporate communication is considered in sufficient detail by Likhacheva, Zavorueva and Gerasimova (2017) and Larionova (2020).
In modern foreign historiography, a few studies are concerned with certain aspects of the methodology for analysing speech aggression in a corporate environment (see D'Mbarne, Chevrier, Henry, Segal, & Tréguer-Felten, 2020; Goodman & Hirsch, 2020). Empirical studies deserve special attention because they consider the methods of neurolinguistics to identify speech aggression in its active and passive forms. For example, Jaafar and Lachiri (2020) and Lefter and Jonker (2017) conducted experimental research on the problem of identifying speech aggression features in corporate communication.
From the point of view of conducting an empirical study, the works by Bonacchi (2020) and Beger (2018) are also fascinating because the authors consider the emotional, connotative, and stylistic classification of speech aggression acts. From a methodological point of view, the study by Rugen (2019), devoted to identifying speech aggression and passive acts, is also very valuable.
Nevertheless, neither Russian nor foreign historiography has yet provided a scientific description of the linguistic processes of speech aggression in corporate communication. Our study has partly filled this gap. The scientific novelty of our research is that the study focuses on the linguistic processes of speech aggression in corporate communication, the gender features of the manifestation of which require a scientific de-
scription.
Material and Methods
Study Material
The study analyses transcripts of business talks as research material. The material was also selected from transcripts of business meetings and conference calls recorded in five major British and American companies: Apple (https://-www.apple.com), BP Plc (https://www.bp.com), and British Airways (https://www.britishair-ways.com), Brown-Forman Corporation (https:-//www.brown-forman.com), and Lloyds Banking Group (https://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com). The 10 transcripts of the negotiations were analysed from the business archives of each company. The general sample of the study thus comprised 50 transcripts of negotiation recordings, which served as the basis for identifying the main gender characteristics of the speech aggression used by men and women working in these companies.
Methodology and Methods
The methodological basis of the research relies on a systematic approach. It includes a group of general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction), as well as a group of special methods: a content analysis of scientific literature on the research topic and statistical data analysis.
For the empirical part of the study, a complex methodology was used, including methods of continuous sampling, definitional analysis, textual analysis, component analysis and complex analysis of vocabulary units, as well as lexical
and stylistic analysis, which are used to identify and point out gender-specific interaction aspects in British and American corporate communication.
During the empirical study, the following criteria were analysed, reflecting the influence of the gender factor on the specifics of the speech aggression manifestation in corporate communication: (1) the primary means of expressing verbal aggression in the speech of women and men in corporate communication; (2) emotional intensity of speech aggression in the speech of women and men participating in the corporate communication process; and (3) the means of speech aggression employed by men and women in the process of corporate communication in terms of the frequency of their use.
For each criterion, all the forms of speech aggression identified in the transcripts of company negotiations were analysed according to the gender of the subject of speech influence. All results of the empirical part of the study were analysed using the Neural Designer, a software tool for advanced analytics that included the inventory for descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.
Results
Having analysed the speech aggression singularities, we identified gender-related differences in corporate communication.
The analysis of the primary means of verbal aggression manifestations in recorded talks involving women and men gave the following results from 50 recordings of negotiations in % ratio (Fig. 1):
Complaint Mockers' (irony, sarcasm) Censure (reproach, accusation) Hostile remark Gross rej eaion Gross demand Tlireat Insult
2% 3% 5% 10%
20% 20% 20%
20%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
Figure 1. The Ratio of the Means of Speech Aggression among the Male Part of the Teams in the Five Surveyed Companies.
The data in Fig.1 show that men often use verbal means of expressing aggression as insults, threats, gross demands, gross rejections, and of-
fensive remarks. Least of all, men use such means as reproach, irony, sarcasm, and complaints to express verbal aggression.
Complaint Mockery (irony, sarcasm) Censure (reproach, accusation) Hoaile remark Gross iq ection Gross demand Threat Insult
40%
20%
0%
2% ■ 3% ^ 5% — 6% — 4%
5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Figure 2. The Ratio of the Means of Speech Aggression Among the Female Part of the Teams in the Five Surveyed Companies.
The opposite situation has been revealed for the female portion of the participants in corporate communication in five surveyed companies (Fig. 2). The data in (Fig. 2) show that women rarely use such verbal means of expressing aggression as insults, threats, gross demands, gross rejections, and offensive remarks. Women often use
such means as reproach, irony, sarcasm, and complaint to express verbal aggression. Based on the data obtained from the analysis of the means of speech aggression among men and women, we analysed the forms of speech aggression manifestation (Fig. 3).
90°/ 0
90% ■ 80%
80% ■
70% ■ Open (explicit) speech agression form
60%
50%
40% ■ Latent (implicit) speech agression form
30% 20? O
20% 10% M
10% 0% Men Women
Figure 3. Dominant Forms of Speech Aggression for Women and Men in the Five Surveyed Companies.
The data in Figure 3 show that the main form of speech aggression used by men is the open, explicit form, while for women, it is more typical to use the latent (passive, implicit) form of speech aggression in corporate communication in the five surveyed companies.
To clarify the results obtained, as well as look into the influence of the gender factor on the speech aggression manifestation, we also analysed the emotional intensity of speech activity on a 10-point scale, where 1-3 points represent a low level of emotional intensity in a statement;
4-6 points - an average level of emotional intensity in a statement; 7-10 points - a high level of emotional intensity in a statement. The emotional intensity in statements was assessed based on the following criteria: (1) increased tone of voice, loud speech, (2) loud laughter, and (3) speech intensity. This method of assessing the emotional intensity of a statement was proposed by Jomah (2020) and applied here to identify the emotional characteristics of speech aggression in men and women in the five surveyed companies (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Emotional Intensity of Speech Aggression in Men and Women in the Five Surveyed Companies.
The data obtained confirm that men are less emotional in the speech aggression manifestation, although they prefer to use its open form. At the same time, women, who use passive speech aggression forms, express their aggressive strate-
gic communication more emotionally.
The analysis revealed a considerable difference in the use of aggressive speech between male and female communicants. The male and female speech in corporate communication dif-
fers primarily in terms of communication behaviour strategy. Women are involved in less productive social activities; hence their behaviour is aimed at interpersonal interaction. Women's speech is also characterised by increased emo-tiveness and speech intensity. Men strive to control and compete; hence they interrupt others more often and seek to control the dialogue. With male communicants, sentences usually are shorter.
The speech aggression analysis in female speech revealed frequent use of units expressing an assessment of an object to which the utterance is directed. The words most often used indicate an intellectual shortcoming of the addressee or express the assessment of their behaviour: jerk, fool, dupe, etc. For example, to skillfully regulate the social behaviour of interlocutors, one should, first and foremost, consider the principle of unique cooperation, that is, speech-based communication corresponding to the conversation objectives.
Apart from that, as evidenced in the analysis, the speech behaviour is interlocutory in essence. It is the dialogue forms that vividly demonstrate the social nature of the language. The choice of the most suitable expression of speech etiquette is what comprises the rules of entering into communication. Let us consider an example of a situation where one should establish contact with a person from another social setting. From the perspective of sociolinguistics, speech often realises the social oppositions of "familiar vs unfamiliar", "female vs male", and "boss vs subordinate".
Almost every negotiation transcript contains sarcasm, irony, or reproach with negative connotations. An indicator of this in the speech of women is the tag question. For instance, in the transcripts of negotiations of the five surveyed companies, the following female remarks are most often encountered, which may be attributed to acts of passive speech aggression.
1. "You have already reached a preliminary
agreement without our participation, haven't
you?"
2. "You really could sell these shares to us, not
our competitors, couldn't you?"
3. "You are a man, so you are always right, aren't you?"
4. "We have discussed this issue twice this week, haven't we?"
5. "This decision is not the smartest, is it?"
6. "You did not think about it too often, did you?"
7. "You cannot afford to sell shares, can you?"
8. "Your department staff is not too hardworking, is it?"
9. "You cannot admit you are wrong, can you?"
10. "You always find the hardest way, don't you?"
Notably, passive speech aggression forms are most often encountered with female communicants within corporate communication. Not allowing themselves to insult their negotiating partners directly, women most often use stylistic devices such as a hint, a veiled reproach, covert ridicule, and sarcasm. Men in their strategies more openly express verbal aggression, as evidenced by analysing negotiation transcripts in the five surveyed companies.
In the men's speech portraits, there is an inverse ratio of tag questions with such negative connotations as mockery, irony, sarcasm, disregard, reproach, imitation, and contempt. Men practically do not use these means; however, several examples were identified based on negotiation transcripts of the five surveyed companies. For example, the transcripts of the negotiations recorded the following questions posed by men to their negotiating partners:
1. "You are not competent in this matter, are you?"
2. "You are personally interested in selling shares, aren't you?"
3. "You react too slowly, don't you?";
4. "You think the Earth is still flat, don't you?"
5. "You're really too smart, aren't you?";
6. "Without you, we would not have resolved this issue, would we?"
7. "You always teach us what to do, don't you?"
8. "You always don't think about the conse-
quences, do you?"
9. "You're used to insulting people, aren't
you?"
10. "You don't like people who can object to you, do you?"
Based on the analysis of the transcripts of the talks in the five surveyed companies, the following preliminary conclusions may be drawn: (1) the speech strategies of the participants in corporate communication constantly contain a gender factor, which determines the specifics of the speech aggression forms in communicative corporate behaviour; (2) females in large American and British companies participating in corporate negotiations use veiled ridicules, reproaches, sarcasm and irony more frequently compared to males; (3) the leading indicator of the speech aggression manifestation in corporate behaviour is the tag question; (4) the female half of the team in companies is characterised by a strategy of passive (hidden) speech aggression, while the male half is characterised by open strategies of speech aggression manifestation, which indicates a more straightforward and succinct verbal expression of the thinking characteristics for the male employees of companies.
The analysis of speech aggression in female speech revealed that the emotional and assessment lexis is less common in speech, with the vocabulary being primarily neutral. It was observed that aggression in female speech often manifests itself in exclamations and the use of lexical units of a low style. This also has something to do with the increased emotional intensity that is typical of women.
Thus, the results of our study allow us to draw the following conclusions:
1. for male participants in corporate communication, speech aggression is a means of overcoming feelings of inferiority, achieving a sense of superiority through self-affirmation at the expense of their partner;
2. for women participating in corporate communication, speech aggression is a means of manipulation, dominance, and protection of their inner space.
The analysis of speech aggression in male speech showed that men interrupt much more often in the dialogue than women. This is conditioned by an instinctive desire to possess dominance and control, in this case - over the dialogue subject.
Nevertheless, partial use of shortened phonetic versions of words and swearwords is another peculiarity of men's speech when expressing aggression. This tendency is conditioned by the male desire to assert themselves and show their importance. Using this way of speech aggression as an insult implies lowering the opponent's social status.
Discussion
The study revealed that the term "aggression" does not lend itself to an unequivocal definition. The difficulty with a clear-cut definition is the absence of an integral form of behaviour reflecting the speaker's motive. This term is used to describe various actions. These manifestations of speech acts are not homogenous in terms of motivation, situations of its manifestation, and the forms and results of their expression.
The problem of speech aggression has been studied by many scholars (Lefter & Jonker, 2017; Malyuga, Maksimova, & Ivanova, 2019; Jaafar & Lachiri, 2020); hence there exists a multitude of various definitions and classifications describing the major types of the speech aggression act. In studies in this direction, the views expressed by Komalova (2016) prevail. Schmidt and Rennhak (2020) agree with theses about the role of gender in corporate communication (p. 22). At the same time, Jomah (2020), in his research, indicates that the gender factor is constantly present in corporate communication (p. 9). Our research has confirmed this conclusion. At the same time, we absolutely agree with Bowen (2019), who draws attention to the complexity and multifactorial nature of the corporate communication process (p. 401).
Study results are also consistent with the conclusions proposed by Goodman and Hirsch
(2020), who emphasise speech etiquette features in corporate communication. Regarding gender differences in corporate communication and the manifestation of forms of speech aggression, Rugen (2019) agrees with our hypotheses statement. Nevertheless, the point of view expressed by Lefter and Jonker (2017) is that to clarify the criteria for choosing specific strategies of speech aggression in corporate communication, it is necessary to consider not only gender but also linguocultural factors. We can agree with this tenet and propose a new direction for researching the problem: the linguocultural analysis of the choice of speech strategies for verbal aggression.
As the study deals with the use of verbal aggression means in the speech of English-speaking men and women, speech aggression is a form of behaviour and is included in the sphere of study of theoretical problems related to communication and speech interaction. This premise is shared by Shahul (2020) and Goodman and Hirsch (2020).
Moreover, Beger (2018) expresses that British speech etiquette is characterised by a more substantial restraining role concerning female speech than male speech compared to American corporate speech etiquette (p. 508). In our opinion, this hypothesis requires additional verification by conducting a separate empirical study. Nevertheless, in the American variant of English, the professional and corporate jargon are increasingly common, primarily typical of men representing certain professions. American English is the language of large-scale multinational companies (Malyuga & Orlova, 2017).
At the same time, study results confirm the opinion shared by most scholars suggesting that speech aggression manifests itself in a disguised way in corporate communication (Malyuga & Tomalin, 2014). From our research standpoint, it is necessary to pay attention to research conducted by Likhacheva, Zavorueva, & Gerasimova (2017), where the authors point to specific means of levelling speech aggression as recommendations for effective corporate communication.
The scientific discussion on the problem has
shown that types of speech aggression may be classified based on various grounds, including the gender criterion, which reveals the peculiarities of choosing a speech aggression strategy by men and women in the process of corporate communication (Alkhammash & Al-Nofaie, 2020). In most classifications, the central criterion is the form of speech aggression expression. Our study proposed a different methodology for assessing speech aggression, considering the gender factor. As a result of the study, it was possible to prove the hypothesis that men use an open speech aggression strategy in an explicit form, and women use a passive (hidden) form of speech aggression in an implicit form. In general, in discussing the problem of speech aggression, in our opinion, one cannot ignore the gender factor, which obviously impacts the choice of speech aggression strategies among women and men participating in corporate communication.
Conclusion
Having analysed the use of verbal aggression means in the speech of English-speaking men and women, as encountered in the transcripts of recorded negotiations, we can identify their fundamental regularities and singularities. We arrived at the conclusion that the differences in speech and expressive means used undoubtedly exist. Preconditioned factors mark the lexis of female and male speech - women are engaged in less productive activity in society and have a subordinate, rather than a dominant, position. Consequently, women's speech is more polite, contains fewer assaults and manifestations of threat, and has more verbs and qualitative adjectives when expressing an act of aggression. It is characterised by increased emotionality and intensity.
Despite the predominance of positive connotations in women's speech, there were cases with negative connotations: sarcasm, irony, and reproach, which indicates a negative characteristic of a particular speech portrait. For female speech behaviour, latent (passive) forms of manifesta-
tion of speech aggression are more characteristic, such as veiled reproach, sarcasm, and mockery of the interlocutor, which are generally kept within the framework of corporate speech etiquette. There were also cases of negative connotations that contained elements of the phatic function.
Men, by contrast, interrupt others more often and seek to control the subject of the dialogue. Apart from that, male sentences, as a rule, are shorter than female ones. Nouns and adjectives are encountered more frequently in male speech. A high probability of offending others also marks it. Men use negative connotations in speech (ridicule, irony, sarcasm, neglect, reproach, imitation, contempt) in their pure form without elements of a phatic function. Also, men are characterised by more straightforward statements addressed to the interlocutor using tag questions within the open (active) speech aggression strategy framework.
The analysis method proposed in the article makes it possible to reveal the essence of verbal aggression as a gender concept that arises in the process of gender speech behaviour within the corporate environment.
The study is useful for gender philosophy in that we proved, based on empirical data, the dependence of forms of verbal aggression on gender, which allows extrapolating the methodology for the analysis of other concepts to the philosophy of gender studies.
The speech behaviour of men and women within corporate communication is woven into a chain of determining factors used in their entirety. Such speech behaviour reveals variation -both stratificational (the social structure of society) and situational (concerning a speech act). In most of the analysed cases of speech aggression based on transcripts of negotiations between American and British companies, women tend to resort to latent forms of speech aggression, and men - tend to open ones. Thus, in the process of corporate communication, one should use stylistically neutral communication means to neutralise the already heightened conflict speech inter-
action or to prevent the emergence of a conflict situation among the company's employees. Nevertheless, the data obtained in the course of our study cannot claim to be universal truth and need additional verification; hence a comparative lin-guocultural analysis of American and British variants of the English language used in corporate communication seems to be a promising direction for further research of acts of speech aggression, in order to identify not only gender but also linguocultural features of speech strategies of corporate communication in speech aggression manifestations.
Acknowledgements
This paper has been supported by the RUDN University Strategic Academic Leadership Program.
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