Аннотация:The article is devoted to the problem of the social aspect of urban discourse. Based on the coverage in the British media of the problems of accessibility of playgrounds and recreational spaces, the article attempts to analyse the speech behaviour of participants in a socially problematic situation. It considers the manifestation of the actors' positions through lexical means expressing their perception of and their attitude to the problem of a single recreation zone divided by a fence. Within the analysed discourse the “residents’ discourse”, formed by the tenants, the activists, the supporters, and the “power discourse”, formed by the city authorities, the developer and the managing companies are distinguished and their linguistic peculiarities are pointed out. The analysis of diverse linguistic means, employed by the actors of the discourse allowed the authors to identify the key cognitive schemes involved. They are the cognitive image of the problem on the whole, the image of the opponent in dispute, the image of the barrier dividing the recreation zones. The article concludes that the citizens do not perceive the urban environment as a single entity. There are numerous disparate images of the urban environment and various cognitive schemes: they regulate the attitude of residents to the environment, the authorities and to each other.
