Какой национальности лицо? Семантика и прагматика одной конструкции

Антропологический форум. 2026. № 70. С. 163–183.

Громенко Е. С., Krongauz M.

The paper describes the construction litso takoy-to natsionalnosti ‘a person of such-and-such an ethnicity’ in Russian with its semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The purpose of the study is to trace the appearance of the construction and analyse how it is used and how it is perceived. Three expressions representing this construction are considered in more detail: ‘a person of Jewish ethnicity’, ‘a person of Caucasian ethnicity’ and ‘a person of German ethnicity’. The methods of corpus linguistics and culturomics are used. The paper highlights systemic and occasional uses. The analysis shows that the construction in question is usually, but not necessarily, used as a euphemism for an ethnonym (or quasi-ethnonym) that has undergone a negative shift. In any case, its use immediately signals such a shift or, more broadly, a negative attitude towards an ethnic group and means that the speaker recognises this shift/shares the negative attitude and identifies with it. In general, the construction tends towards negative contexts and immediately evokes a negative assessment of the ethnic group. By interlocutors who object to the negative assessment the construction itself is felt to be unacceptable and is evaluated negatively, but they can use it ironically, as if in the name of a society or an uncultured person with nationalistic views.

Keywords: euphemism, эвфемизм, негативная оценка, негативный сдвиг, эвфемия, euphemia, negative shift, negative assessment