Discursive representation of authoritarianism in academic communication

The article deals with the discursive category of authoritarianism as one of the typical constants of the prototypical communicative situation, involving the inequality of the participants of the semiotic status-oriented interaction. The article provides an overview of this term in such Humanities as Psychology, Sociology, etc.; the concepts of authority and authoritarianism are differentiated from the perspective of the illocutionary point. The authors give the definition of an authoritarian discourse, the main illocutionary force of which is to exert a psychological pressure on communication partners. The markers of discursive representation of authoritarianism at different semiotic levels within the format of academic communication are analyzed. The key pragmatic characteristics of the academic discourse genres are the asymmetry of the communicative initiative and a teacher`s dominance in communication. The paper concludes that authoritarianism is expressed by a variety of lexical, grammatical, syntactic means at the verbal level (excessive use of professional terminology, modal words with the meaning of obligation, a language game, introductory words with directive connotation, etc.); and by phonation and kinetic means (speech volume and tempo, expressive mimic and gestures) at the nonverbal level. The pragmatic aspect of authoritarian discourse is taken into consideration.