Understatement is a rhetorical device, based on making a statement weaker than it could be made in a given situation (i.e. underrating, less confident, presented as unimportant). In modern Russian, especially in colloquial speech, an extremely popular rhetorical figure is a combination of understatement and sarcasm; recently, several new ways of forming this figure have appeared: na minutochku, esli chto, nichego chto..? [Eto na minutochku moya professiya; Eto, esli chto, moya professiya; A nichego, chto eto moya professiya?] ([literally This is my profession, for a minute; This is my profession, just in case; Doesn’t it mean anything that this is my profession?]). For some language units, the corresponding meaning is partially or completely lexicalized. So, na minutochku and na sekundochku do not initially possess a “degrading” sense (if it is not really about time, meaning that you need a tiny bit of time for something); they are always used sarcastically. That said, as opposed to na minutochku and na sekundochku, other word forms (na minutu, na minutku, na sekundu, na mig, na mgnovenie) are not used this way. Thus, here we have a completely lexicalized figure of speech. In general, sarcasm is extremely difficult to formalize. Therefore, detection of linguistic manifestations of sarcasm appears to be extremely valuable.
