ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8327-5197The article deals with the phenomenon of the communicative failure within the framework of intercultural communication of the representatives of English- speaking and non-English-speaking cultures using the English language. The specificity of the representation of the abovementioned phenomenon in structural-semantic and functional aspects is discussed. Communicants are considered as polycultural discursive personalities acting at the ethnocentrist and ethnorelativist levels
