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Abstract. The last few years have seen the influx of a new kind of tourist to India -medical tourists, coming in search of good quality and affordable treatments for a variety of medical procedures. With a large number of patients coming from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, the demand for local people with knowledge of Russian is steadily rising. Through ethnographic field work, which includes participant observations and interviews, this paper traces the development of the use of Russian in large private hospitals in Delhi, which have started attracting patients from the former Soviet Republics for medical services. The aim of the present paper is to introduce a pilot study of a relatively new sphere of economic activity where commodification of Russian language is acquiring a prominent place in India. My goal is to examine how Russian provides an added value to these hospitals in terms of the clientele they attract and how well it works for the clients themselves. In addressing these issues the paper aims to reveal the specific conditions and processes that characterize the use of Russian in 'medical tourism' in India and the motivation of the personnel involved. The results of the study indicate that commodification of the Russian language in India is an expanding phenomenon.

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By displaying a certain fragment of reality in the linguistic consciousness of a person, socio-cognitive categories convey important information about the social structure of society, the lingua-cultural identity of its representatives and the values they share. This study focuses on kinship terms in the Syrian Arabic and Hindi languages. It is aimed at identifying similarity and the cultural specificity of kinship terms in two linguistic cultures and explaining the identified features through types of cultures and cultural values. The research is based on kinship terms that name consanguineal (blood) and affinal (non-blood) relatives in Arabic and Hindi. The material was collected through analysis of terms in dictionaries as well as anonymous questionnaires and observation. The collected material was systematized and analyzed using comparative, definitional, semantic and lingua-cultural methods. The results showed that both languages have a rich system of kinship terms, in which the line of kinship (paternal or maternal), the type of kinship (relatives by blood or through marriage), and age are recorded. They testify to the We-identity of the representatives of the cultures under consideration for whom family relations are of great value, and to the importance of determining the place of each member in society in the social system. The revealed features showed that age differences are more important in Indian society than in Syrian, although respect for elders is one of the most important values of both cultures. The results obtained once again confirm the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of language, which in turn provides new data for other areas of humanities.

The purpose of this study is to identify differences in the use of Address Forms for an unfamiliar addressee in British and Indian English and explain them through a sociocultural context. Given the fact that address forms are dependent on both situational and geographical parameters, and taking into account the rich cultural diversity of India, the study is limited to address forms used by residents of the two capital cities – London and Delhi. The material was collected through observations and questionnaires and was analysed with a comparative analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) and reference to the theory of cultural differences, intercultural pragmatics, politeness theory and the theory of culturally specific communication styles or communicative ethnic styles. For clarification of the results, the interview method was also used, attempting to establish the regularity with which the representatives of the given cultures use nominative address forms for an unfamiliar addressee, the choice of address forms for different age groups and gender and the sociocultural factors affecting the choice of address forms. The analysis of experimental data shows significant differences both in the choice of address forms and in their functioning, it convincingly demonstrates the influence of the Hindi language and local culture on the Indian version of the English language, on the communicative behaviour of Indian bilinguals in the given situation and their communication style in general.