<p>Russian discourse markers are not confined to fixed structural slots but play a central role in negotiating empathic alignment. This paper develops this claim via the Model of Empathy Orientation, a framework that recasts these markers as devices for managing alignment between interlocutors. Drawing on Schiffrin’s discourse model and on psychological constructs of perspective-taking, the analysis identifies two principal axes of empathic interaction. The Propositional Stance elicits affective alignment by means of proactive and passive markers, while the Receptive Stance affirms empathy through affirmative and epistemically modest markers. The methodology combines qualitative micro-discursive sampling, statistical verification using Pointwise Mutual Information, and quantitative mapping of syntactic non-integrality. The results indicate that empathic interaction is carried by distinct collocational patterns whose pragmatic profiles support the negotiation of shared cognitive ground and provide an empirical basis for studying the relationship between discursive structure and affective communication in Russian.</p>