The article is devoted to the study of two types of communication with a mythological character. The protagonist’s tactics depend on the narrative genre. In the bylichka-tale a mythological character is represented as a potential aggressor and must be driven away, presumably by swear words. In a fairy tale the same mythological character could on the contrary have a function of a magic helper or a donor. He rewards the protagonist for his politeness and kindness. An erroneous assessment of the kind of ‘reality’ can itself become the object of narration. Two Old Irish tales are studied in a contrastive comparison. In both tales an encounter of five hunting brothers with a monstrous woman is described. She proposes to copulate with her to each of them. In the first tale (on the sons of Eochaid) only Niall agrees to this demand, and as a reward receives the sovereignty over Ireland. In the second, the initial situation is the same, but the monstrous woman turns out to be their cousin and rival in disguise. All brothers agree to copulate with her, but find themselves bound and enslaved. The comparative analysis of the two texts is based on the inclusion of the point of view of the compiler and its intended audience in the material; as well as the opposition of pagan tradition and its Christian interpretation.

The article continues research on the phenomenon of evil eye damage. The author’s concept was based on the following definition: “The evil eye is an unintentional, spontaneously induced verbal magical effect with a negative result, determined by the linguistic semantics of the evil eye word. The verbal component underlying the magical act can be expressed in direct speech or associated with the perception by the addressee of the addressee’s unspoken thoughts and intentions.” The verbal-magical act of evil eye damage can be presented in the form of a communication model: addressee (sender of the evil eye word) – verbal message (evil eye word) – addressee (recipient of the message) and object of the evil eye damage; this object can be either the addressee themselves or any vitally significant object for him that is in the field of view. The analyzed oral stories about the evil eye reproduce this communicative model. When receiving an unexpected message, a cognitive “stupor” arises in the recipient’s mind, which breaks the perception of the surrounding reality into “before” and “after” situations. If the “before” situation is associated with the usual, “ordinary” worldview, then the “after” situation is associated with a rethinking of the message aimed at eliminating cognitive dissonance. The emotional component plays a special role in this gap. The “after” situation is contrasted with the neutral, initial context and acquires a negative meaning. Cognitive efforts are aimed at searching for additional references – correlating verbal messages with objects of extra-linguistic reality, turning to primary nominations, and literal interpretation of words. As a result of a breakdown in communication, the evil eye word gives rise to two cognitive models – models of understanding the message. The original meaning is perceived by the addressee-recipient as a “speech error”, causing additional cognitive efforts in their mind, generating a “corrected” version of comprehension. In the structure of the plot, these two parts represent the initial and final situations associated with two models of understanding the verbal message.

During the special military operation (SMO) period, social media abide with photographs of atmospheric phenomena and accompanying short texts which interpret the image as a divination. This practice of semiotizing natural phenomena is rooted in folklore. However, contemporary texts by social media users about heavenly signs are substantively and formally close to institutional rather than folklore narratives. These texts become the subject of a conflict of semiotic ideologies between supporters of the idea of celestial phenomena as an indexical sign of the will of a transcendental actor, followers of conspiracy theories about their technical origin, and users who deny the possibility of semiotization of natural phenomena as a manifestation of the actions of any type of actor. The intensity of the conflict of ideologies is determined by the affordances of social media. In turn, the conflict leads to the formation of self-censorship and the emergence of “zero interpretations” that protect users from possible social risks.

The fairy-tale type SUS 756B “Robber Madej” consists of two moves: in the first, the hero is a young man who becomes a priest who sets a penitential task to the robber Madej, the hero of the second move. The plot-forming element of 756B is the hero’s penance – growing a flowering apple tree from a dry cane. The East Slavic area of the spread of fairy tales about the godfather’s bed is divided into two zones – RussianBelarusian and Ukrainian-Belarusian. The East Slavic records lack the additional test of the second move, which is typical for Western European ones, where the hermit appears as a false hero who envies the forgiveness of the robber Madej. The East Slavic plots of 756B were borrowed from Western Europe through Polish influence, but they contain a significant number of features that are explained in the apocrypha about the Tree of the Cross and the iconography of the prudent robber, which became widespread during the period of the second South Slavic influence. “The Word about the Tree of the Cross” defines the actant structure of the fairy tale: Abraham turns into a priest giving an impossible penance, and Lot turns into a great sinner (Madej). Madej is emblematically correlated with Adam’s head: aged, he fuses with an apple tree, grows overgrown with moss, lying at the bottom of a tree symbolically identical to the Cross of the Lord. The form of the deed of the repentant robber goes back to several sources: the motif of the flowering of a dry cane – to the image of the club of Hercules and the rod of Aaron, and the motif of growing a tree from a dry cane – to the Life of John the Dwarf (Kolobos). The iconography of the evangelical-apocryphal prudent robber defines the cruciform pose of the robber Madej and the Garden of Eden surrounding him. Through ancient Russian iconography, one of the two proper names of the fairy – tale hero, Rakh, is spreading.

The paper examines specific features of the dissemination of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems and comments on them in Soviet and post-Soviet times. The readers stories of knowledge and reading of the poetry, the social contacts and the transmitted meanings are reconstructed on the base of interviews and reader’s essays. Authors argue that, in spite of the written and published sources, the texts transmission was oral. The access to printed sources was limited and conditioned by personal trust and the formation of friendly groups. As a result, the knowledge about the texts was transmitted along with the reader’s and human fascination with them, a sense of cultural belonging and inclusion in the network of ingroup. The situation has changed with the spread of knowledge about the poet and the inclusion of her poetry in the school curriculum. Tsvetaeva becomes one of the classic writers who may not evoke a personal connection. However, sometimes schoolchildren’s love for poetry and the image of the poet comes not through school, but through their mother, grandmother or other significant adults, and it serves as a connection between generations. The oral transmission of written texts determines the reader’s special respect for them.