The article is concerned with the mental formation “assistance” in the modern Russian language consciousness. The author determines central semantic features of the concept under study, reveals the essence of assistance as an interactive action, identifies situational components of assistance. Behavioral norms associated with receiving and providing assistance are characterized. Moral and utilitarian prescriptions and the guidelines of the recipient and the sender of assistance are described.

The article deals with the conceptualization of disability in the linguistic consciousness in the everyday and professional aspects. The medical, legal and social aspects of disability are under consideration, the features of the lexical category of the words “invalid” and “crippled” are characterized, the three key aspects of the imagery and the perceptive fixation of the disability - the description of the physical defect, the behavior of a disabled person and the society’s attitude to it - are described in the article. The author explains the axiological grounds of disability in the form of behaviour standards recommended for the disabled and those who are close to them.

The article deals with speech therapist communication from the pragmalinguistic point of view. The following categories are in the focus of discussion: templateness (high predictability of communicative actions), persuasiveness (directive speech acts predominance), conventionality (communicative moves typical of a given discourse type). The categories in question are gradual.