Reflection of the professional attitudes of a linguistic personality in the image of a firefighter in the children’s tale “The Cheerful Firefighter” by I. V. Zartayskaya

The paper considers the professional attitudes of a firefighter’s linguistic personality using the example of the image of a firefighter in the children’s tale “The Cheerful Firefighter” by I. V. Zartayskaya. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that professional attitudes in the structure of a firefighter’s linguistic personality have not been examined before: the paper is the first to discover that the linguistic model of a firefighter realises itself in stereotypes associated with the notions of “seriousness” and “bravery” and to outline the features of a professional’s speech activity corresponding to these categories. At the same time, a literary text was used for the study, while the linguistic personality of a firefighter was investigated previously only within the framework of business communication. Hence, the paper aims to identify the professional attitudes of a firefighter in speech interaction. As a result, the examination of a firefighter’s image in I. V. Zartayskaya’s children’s tale “The Cheerful Firefighter” led to the discovery of professional attitudes associated with the notions of “seriousness” and “bravery”, which exclude speech behaviour in the form of teasing, performing humourous songs, joking, smiling, etc., as well as imply the use of speech means and techniques that determine the successful resolution of an extreme situation, e.g., empathic listening, contact-establishing dialogue, calm tone of voice, etc. Thus, the speech characteristics of the protagonist presented in the work reflect the professional attitudes of a firefighter’s linguistic personality correlating with the categories of “seriousness” (the speech behaviour of a “person in uniform” does not allow for the expression of entertainment, comedy and demonstration of wit, since the SERIOUSNESS concept denotes a moral criterion the measure of which is a sense of proportion and the absence of any playful forms of speech behaviour) and “bravery” (the speech activity of a firefighter is determined by the ability to correctly interpret information and resolve conflicts in an emergency situation, use speech support tactics, as well as voice skills and clear sound pronunciation).