Spontaneous Rhetoricians and Philologists in A. N. Ostrovsky’s plays: “Talents and Admirers”

There are quite a few characters in Ostrovsky’s plays who speculate on the language issues. The most prominent of them are manipulators whose speech behavior is determined by their need to reach a certain result. One of them is Ivan Semyonich Velikatov, whose tactics and speech behavior form the composition of Ostrovsky’s play “Talents and Admirers” (1881). Depicting the speech behavior of the rivals – Dulebov, Bakin, Meluzov when talking to Negina, Ostrovsky consistently reveals the chain of their speech errors, expressed by imperatives and didactics. Unlike them, Velikatov does not make the same mistakes. Being phatic and polite and stylistically creating the opportunity for Negina to choose and decide for herself in the letter he addresses her, he meets his target: a young woman decides to link her fate with him. Thus, Ostrovsky’s “Talents and Admirers” is not only about power of money and dependence of a person’s fate on social circumstances, likes аnd dislikes, ethic and aesthetic preferences, but also about power of words that under certain circumstances can define a human’s life.