Introduction
Conclusion
As a result of the work done, the following tasks were solved: theoretical aspects of Russian speech were considered; an analysis of the problems and prospects of Russian speech in the 21st century was carried out. During the technological process, new words appeared in people’s speech that were necessary for use - “computer” (computer), “keyboard”, “printer”, “laptop”. Progress has not stood still; written language is also being replenished with novelty. And young people, for ease of pronunciation, shorten words using substitute words. For example, “mouse”, “ICQ”, introducing some variety into speech. Along with new words in written and spoken speech, even if outdated words are not always used often. Echoes of the past can be heard in the performances of old plays in theaters or when you find yourself in the world of fairy tales, legends, and epics. The speech of the heroes of these works, like the works of A.S. Pushkin and Zhukovsky themselves, is replete with words and expressions that are lyrical to the ear: “baet” - says, “abuse” - battle, “knight” - warrior, etc. When you re-read the classics, where you can learn the culture of speech, you take pride in the fact that in Rus', in Russia, masters of words have never been translated, be they ancient chroniclers, classics or modern masters. And Ershov’s fairy tale “The Little Humpbacked Horse” has been read by children and adults of more than one generation, starting from the time of Catherine II. Although in those days the speech was ornate, the unusual turns and smoothness of sounds invite you into the world of a fairy tale. I would like to use in speech: “mouth” - instead of lips, “lanits” - instead of cheeks, “brow” - instead of forehead, but this is in my thoughts, but in reality it’s a different century, a different time. Many words that are often heard were borrowed from other languages. Due to their frequent use and ease of pronunciation, they have firmly entered our vocabulary, replenishing our speech. For example: exam, dictation, director - from Latin, marmalade, broth - from French. When talking about the culture of speech, I would like to highlight youth slang. Trying to stand out from the crowd, a person wants to be noticed. But as? Either in appearance or in your speech, it may not be entirely appropriate and correct. This can be obscenities (which often sounds like something taken for granted on TV screens) and not always pleasant to hear words that do not carry any meaning - cool, theme. But this is a tribute to fashion. It is difficult to say what prevents us from writing and pronouncing words correctly. Lack of time and laziness to look into a spelling or explanatory dictionary. As a rule, in the bustle, in the pursuit of unnecessary things, we do not have enough time for the main thing. It would seem that the emphasis is in the words, but it turns out how important it is where to place it. Either the meaning of the word changes or the word hurts the ear. Only “call”, and not “call”, which is what they say is worth. And there are many such examples. The Russian language is rich in phraseological phrases, participles, synonyms, antonyms - all the diversity that distinguishes it from other languages. But often in our speech there are words, especially in dialogues with opponents, that are heard from TV screens in some well-known programs that are not entirely clear in meaning and are not perceived by ear. For example, “a priori”, “come il faut”, “misalliance”. The meaning of these words is confusing and it would be possible to replace these words with more understandable and familiar meanings. But this is a tribute to the times. So it turns out that the new is well forgotten old. So in the culture of speech - if you want to think and speak correctly, read the classics, where you are sure to discover something for yourself. And you need to start with yourself first, and not look for errors in others. And not from Monday, it is usually difficult, but from the next minute start saying not “okay”, but our usual “okay”, not a dry “ciao” or “goodbye”, but our warm “goodbye”, meaning goodbye goodbye, until the next time, I will be glad to see you.
Bibliography
Eromasova A.A. Russian mentality: anthropo-cultural originality: abstract of dissertation... Doctor of Philosophy. Sci. St. Petersburg, 2011 42 p. Karaulov Yu. N. Russian language and linguistic personality. M.: Nauka, 2010. Karasik V.I. Cultural dominants in language // Language personality: cultural concepts. Volgograd-Arkhangelsk: Peremena, 2012. P. 3-16. Kochnova K.A. Features of the language of the media of the last decade // Trends in the development of the language of the media: current problems. Tambov, 2010. pp. 176-179. Kochnova K.A. Culturology: Textbook. Nizhny Novgorod: National State Agricultural Academy, 2014. 196 p. Kitaigorodskaya M.V., Rozanova N.N. Russian speech portrait. M., 2010. 128 p. Kochnova K.A. Linguistic appearance of the Internet environment // Science, education, society: trends and prospects. M.: AR-Consult LLC, 2014. pp. 69-71. Kochnova K.A. Language of culture: conceptual analysis of language // Trends in the development of media language: current problems. Tambov, 2010. P.179-182. Leorda S.V. Speech portrait of a modern student: abstract. dis... cand. Philol. Sci. Saratov, 2012. 30 p. The role of the human factor in language. Language and the picture of the world / Ed. B.I. Serebrennikova. M.: Nauka, 2011. P. 8-69. Sedov K.F. Discourse and personality. Evolution of communicative competence. M.: Labyrinth, 2014. 304 p. Sternin I.A. Social processes and the development of the modern Russian language: An outline of changes in the Russian language at the end of the twentieth century. Voronezh-Perm, 2012 Chanchina A.V. Words with unique roots in synchrony and diachrony // Russian word: diachronic and synchronic aspects. Orekhovo-Zuevo: OZGPI, 2013. pp. 285-288. Results of the Unified State Exam 2015. Access mode: http://mpgu.rf/novosti/itogi-ege-2015/ Statistical and analytical report on the results of the Unified State Examination RUSSIAN LANGUAGE in 2015 Access mode: http://rcoko.khb.ru/files/ege/stat /2015/Chast_2_Russkiy_yazik.pdf
Editorial office of the portal "Russian World"
03.11.2014
As part of the VIII Russian World Assembly, which this year is taking place in Sochi, a panel discussion “The Culture of Russian Speech in the 21st Century” took place. It was moderated by the President of the Russian Academy of Education, President of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, President of St. Petersburg State University, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation Lyudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaya.
Lyudmila Verbitskaya, President of the Russian Academy of Education, President of MAPRYAL, President of St. Petersburg State University, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation:
— The culture of speech in the 21st century has decreased. I consider it dangerous not only for the culture of speech - for the Russian language and for society - to put up with the total offensive of the low style that permeates our media, public policy and public space in general.
According to Verbitskaya, it is necessary to consistently promote high speech standards and modern literary norms of speech, starting from preschool education. Only in this case will a child be formed into a cultural personality. And, as a result, the richness of the Russian language will return to us.
Sergei Malevinsky, professor at Kuban State University, specialist in practical stylistics, drew the attention of those gathered to the lack of textbooks and dictionaries. The professor noted that the language is changing and the question arises: what are the compilers of dictionaries, as well as codifiers of the norms of the Russian language, guided by?
Malevinsky recalled that a language norm is determined by the degree of use of an expression, provided that the source is sufficiently authoritative. However, already within the framework of the Prague Linguistic Circle, a different approach was formed: correctly - like the classics, first of all. At the same time, the circle participants assumed that the source of the norm should be the speech of all educated people. Such work was carried out in the Soviet Union - mass surveys to draw up standards.
Lyubov Klobukova, professor at Moscow State University:
Using unmotivated borrowings, in particular fake (fake, fake), the speaker cuts off conditionally marginalized people who do not know English. This indicates the stratification of society.
We must fight clear and conscious attempts to disqualify Russian speech.
Valery Mokienko, Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Slavic Philology, Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg University:
As soon as a Russian professor wants to immerse himself in the mystery of Russian warfare, questions begin to arise and interest in him arises. I, in collaboration with T. Nikitina, published the “Dictionary of Russian swear words (matisms, obscenisms, euphemisms with historical and etymological comments)”, as well as the “Dictionary of foul language”, the preface to which was written by the respected professor L. Verbitskaya.
In everyday life, we often encounter profanity. On television they found a way out - obscene expressions are bleeped. But I think this is hypocrisy, and the idea that a ban will lead to displacement is naive.
Speaking about the appearance of new words in the Russian language, it is worth recalling that they appeared throughout the history of our language. In particular, not so long ago they struggled with the word “computer” (computer), however, as we see, it has firmly entered into everyday life and nothing bad has happened to the Russian language.
Dan Davidson, Vice President of MAPRYAL, President of the American Councils for International Education, noted that in the Internet it is necessary to reconsider the conditions of cultural authenticity. In the modern world, according to the American specialist, special attention should be paid to adaptive practice in pedagogy. This, in particular, will make it possible to vary teaching, create new lesson structures in which the teacher will be able not only to carry out independent work and control over students, but will also allow him to work individually, disconnecting students from independent work in turn.
Inge Mangus, director of the Tallinn Pushkin Institute, chairman of EstAPRYAL:
The Russian diaspora abroad often acts as a small nation and also worries about the purity of the Russian language.
Margarita Rusetskaya, and. O. Rector of GIRYAP, noted that when talking about language it is impossible not to take into account the processes that occur in education.
She spoke about the Russian language teaching project, developed on the basis of GIRYAP on behalf of the Russian Language Council under the Government of the Russian Federation. According to Rusetskaya, the development of a distance course for studying RFL is currently being completed, and from November level A1 will be available.
Sergey Bogdanov, Vice-Rector of St. Petersburg State University, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Russkiy Mir Foundation:
When we talk about the Russian language, we are talking about the national Russian idea. This is an imperial idea in a good sense. The idea of harmonious coexistence of many ethnic groups, the idea of the historical mission of Russia, which is ensured by the Russian language and Russian culture, is a thesis. But in practice the situation contradicts him. Humanity has in its hands an incredible tool for collective existence - the Internet and social networks. Every person now has the right to vote and public speech. And these voices began to sound. As a result, the communicative level of social existence began to fall - remember last year.
Elena Kazakova, professor of philology at St. Petersburg State University:
At our university we have a program “Russian as a state language” - teachers, doctors, including officials, take it, but businessmen also take part. A young businessman told me: “I want to be understood, that’s why I came to you.” The guy is only 24 years old. He asked: “Is there a good textbook on the Russian language? Why is it so boring to teach Russian?” So my colleagues suggest: let’s create such an interesting textbook on the Russian language together. This is the only way to revive young people’s interest in the “great and mighty.”
It is difficult not to notice the transformations that the modern Russian language is experiencing. This is influenced by both external factors, such as the pressure of the English language, and internal ones, such as the so-called “spelling games”. When Russian speakers try to assess the changes taking place, they encounter a number of difficulties, since it is not possible to do this using the criteria of “good” or “bad”. Linguists and philologists who study the modern Russian language can help here. How and why is the Russian language changing? What works about the Russian language can be called “legendary books”? How did the letter “ё” appear in the Russian language?
“The Russian language is at the stage of losing grammatical categories”
“There is a theory according to which language develops along the path from a simple grammar, the so-called isolating one, when it exists exclusively in the form of word order in a sentence, to a more complex system of morphology, consisting of systems of declension, conjugation, and numerous rules of inflection in many parts of speech. And then from this more complex system it begins to simplify again and move to an isolating type. Unfortunately, this theory can only be traced over a fairly long period of time, because language develops very slowly. But if you try to trace the history of some languages known to us over thousands of years, it is clear that this theory is correct."
Interview with linguist Kirill Babaev about pendulum changes in grammar, creolization of languages and modern processes in Russian.
Erratic semantics
“The situation in which a person learns two writing systems is reminiscent of the old joke about a shepherd who is asked: “How do you count your sheep: they are running, this wool is a rippling sea.” He says: “Oh, what are you talking about?” I never count by heads! I count legs and divide by 4." This is erratic writing. When a person, deliberately distorting the norm both for himself and for his reader, keeps the correct spelling, normative, in the background. Why he does it is a more difficult question."
7 facts about deliberate distortion of words and expressions by native speakers.
5 books about the Russian language
“Many of Chukovsky’s thoughts and words seem to be written about our time. For example: “But the years have passed, and I, in turn, have become an old man. Now, at my age, I am supposed to hate the words that were introduced into our speech by youth and scream about the corruption of the language. Moreover, more words immediately flooded into me, like any of my contemporaries, in two or three years, than my grandfathers and great-grandfathers over the past two and a half centuries" (let me remind you that the book was published in 1962 But Chukovsky, despite the fact that he is supposed to, does not hate. Although he still hates some things. And for this object he hated, he came up with a term that has outlived its time and is still used today - “office worker” ( in fact, that’s the name of one of the chapters of his book).”
“The history of the letter “ё” is one of the most mysterious phenomena in the history of Russian spelling”
“In fact, the history of the letter “е” is one of the most mysterious phenomena in the history of Russian spelling. Most of the spelling innovations over the last, say, three hundred years, starting with Peter I, have been traced quite well. And the story about the letter “e” is very mysterious , with a lot of legends and speculation. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the legalization of the letter “е” has not yet happened. It is known that the letter “e” appeared at the end of the 18th century. And the tradition has been confidently for decades (maybe , even centuries) connected its appearance with the name of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin - a man, firstly, very famous, and secondly, very progressive."
Interview with philologist Ilya Itkin about the letter “ё”, the phenomenon of the emergence of new letters and reforms in the history of the Russian language.
Dialogues: Norm in Russian
"There is an interesting thing: some word appears, and something is wrong with it, it does not manage to take root normally in the language. What will happen next? Either some incorrect coloring will be erased from it, and it will take root, or it will leave language. There are some words that live for decades and centuries with this coloring, and for centuries people have reported “I don’t like this word, there is something so wrong in it." The concept of a norm is a very interesting thing. But you need to understand that everything works more complex. Norms are mobile, they change, differ socially and are very subjective. Considering all this and looking closely at the language, we should rather not angrily exclaim “How can this be? They say it wrong here!”, but try to think about what is in front of us and with what we're dealing with."
Conversation between philologist Hasan Huseynov and linguist Irina Levontina about the modern Russian language, its transformation and people’s attitude towards violations of speech norms.
“Before the revolution in Russia, significantly less than half of all residents were literate. Even a hundred and fifty years ago, many did not know how to read and write, and letters for them were some kind of ornament, while the language existed only in oral form. The idea that that spelling is a kind of superstructure over the language, which can be arranged in any way and does not have any influence on it.
This idea is indeed true where literate people are a special select caste, but it is completely unsuitable for those societies in which we live now, where all people obviously know how to read and write."
7 facts about the functioning and role of spelling for language in modern conditions.
Point of view | School Russian
“The main problem is one: often even the teachers themselves do not understand that the Russian language and literature is the main school subject, with a huge gap from all others in its importance and value for schoolchildren. All other subjects - all without exception! - are secondary and subordinate to this, the main thing. And the reason is simple: this is the only subject (separating language from literature in the school curriculum is absurd) that for the rest of a person’s life determines his thinking, his way of communicating, his ability to explain himself and understand another. When studying physics or mathematics, you must express yourself clearly and accurately, understand the task, be able to reformulate it. Therefore, in particular, it is necessary to separate the actual teaching at school, many years of copious reading and communication about the language in the language, from the final examination phase, when a person must, upon leaving school, show what he has achieved."
Opinions of PostScience experts on the main problems of teaching the Russian language in secondary school.
The culture of Russian speech in the 21st century
Panel discussion
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
President of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, President of the Russian Academy of Education, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation
Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba wrote: to see how the language has changed, it is necessary for at least half a century to pass. And we are seeing that such changes are happening much faster. And this is connected with those processes that occur not only in the Russian language, but in other languages too. These exolinguistic circumstances, situations external to the language, also very often influence the changes that we observe.
What is the culture of speech today, what is happening to our language? Can we accept these changes or should we resist them? After all, internal linguistic factors are stronger than external ones. A similar problem, which can affect the development of the language system, also occupied our predecessors, and we remember that the points of view on this were completely different.
I would like our discussion to be started by Sergei Oktyabrevich Malevinsky, professor at Kuban State University.
Sergei MALEVINSKY
Professor of the Department of General and Slavic-Russian Linguistics, Kuban State University
In our Krasnodar Territory, until recently, the functions of the Minister of Culture were performed by my classmate, who, together with me, graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Kuban University. She was a Komsomol activist, then she worked in the administrative department and rose to become the Minister of Culture of Kuban. In the last years of her cultural management, she began to introduce into the consciousness of the masses that the official language of the entire Kuban and the regional administration should not be the Russian literary language, but the Kuban balachka. Can you imagine an official business language based on the Kuban dialect? Well, she was sent off to retire on time, and this idea with the ballachka died in God's head.
This is such a historical curiosity that my speech would not be completely sad.
And in the main part I would like to speak not as a scientist, professor, theorist, but as a practical teacher. As a person who has been teaching a course in practical stylistics and speech culture for many, many years at various faculties of Kuban State University. Being a language historian by training, I approached the culture of speech, this new matter for myself, with all responsibility. I started studying materials and dictionaries. I bring spelling dictionaries and various grammar reference books to classes with students. It often happens that a student looks for a word in the dictionary: how it is pronounced, where the emphasis is placed, how some of its forms are formed. And then he looks up at me and asks: “Is that really what they say? Where did they get all this from? We’ve never heard anything like this!”
At first I thought that all this comes from lack of education, from lack of culture, but then I began to understand: in spelling dictionaries and various kinds of reference books one comes across such interpretations, such formulations, such recommendations that are ungodly outdated. That is, some dictionaries recommend that our students speak the way our fathers and grandfathers spoke. But language doesn’t stand still. Language develops. The norms of the Russian literary language are developing, the normative speech ideas of Russian speakers are changing. Unfortunately, this is not always reflected in dictionaries and reference books.
And then the question arises: what are the compilers of dictionaries, reference books, and codifiers of the norms of the Russian literary language guided by? Apparently, with your instinct? Although back in 1948, Elena Sergeevna Iskrina, in one of her books, formulated the principle of determining the normativity of linguistic units. She said quite clearly: “the normativity of a speech unit is determined by the degree of its use in speech, provided that the source is of sufficient authority.” Frequency of use, provided that the sources are sufficiently authoritative. Iskrina herself wrote that such authoritative sources in terms of studying literary norms are the works of classical writers and politicians.
But in parallel with this, within the framework of the Prague Linguistic Circle, a different approach was formulated. Prague residents wrote: yes, of course, the works of classical writers should be a source for studying the norms of literary language - that’s why they are classics. But what is a classic? This is what is in the past. And now? And the residents of Prague said that, along with the works of the classics, exactly the same equal source for the study of literary norms should be the speech and normative speech consciousness of the modern intelligentsia, the modern educated strata of society: teachers, engineers, doctors, lawyers. In general, all educated people.
And here’s what’s interesting: in Soviet times, wonderful books were published, such as “The Russian Language According to Mass Survey Data,” edited by Leonid Petrovich Krysin. The work “Grammatical correctness of Russian speech (experience of a frequency-stylistic dictionary of variants)” was published. The most serious works in which the normative speech ideas and speech practice of the intelligentsia were studied.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen such work lately.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
A mass circulation of the “Comprehensive Normative Dictionary of the Russian Language as the State Language of the Russian Federation” is coming out soon, which is both explanatory and grammatical. It is based on the “National Corpus of the Russian Language” and frequency dictionaries. And your concern, of course, is understandable, because there is nothing to give to students today.
I would like to give the floor to Lyubov Pavlovna Klobukova. She is a professor at Moscow State University and played a huge role in what I think is a very important event. Fifteen years ago, the Russian Society of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature was created, and Lyubov Pavlovna, who is very sensitive to the Russian language, participated in its formation. She has a lot of interesting ideas.
Lyubov KLOBUKOVA
Head of the Department of Russian Language for Foreign Students of Humanities Faculties of Moscow State University
I would like to touch upon the very dangerous process of discodification of the Russian language today.
To understand what is behind this term - “discodification”, let’s remember what codification is. These are the words of Viktor Viktorovich Panov, who defined that codification is “the conscious concern of the entire society about language.” He wrote: “The role of codifiers—those who preserve the merits of the literary language—are linguists, journalists, public figures, announcers, teachers, and university professors.” It’s simply amazing what words a person could find! "Care"! It's like a father talking about his child.
These words are more relevant than ever today. The fact is that during critical periods in the development of society, the results of codification are often called into question due to the destructive language practices of discodifiers.
Who is this? First, let’s define that discodification is a destructive activity to destroy existing norms of a literary language. I want to emphasize - deliberate destruction. There are a lot of people who deliberately destroy the norms of literary language, and I even united them into several groups.
First of all, these are highly qualified specialists. You see what the problem is: these are not some illiterate people who don’t know how to speak. These are specialists in advertising products of transnational companies. They deliberately and purposefully violate the norms of Russian speech in the advertising texts they create in order to achieve the necessary commercial effect.
The second group of ideological discodifiers is formed by intellectuals, experts in foreign languages, who organize their speech practice according to the principle “in any convenient case, I use a foreign word instead of a Russian word.”
The discodifier always knows what he is doing. He always consciously strives for shockingness at the lexical level. In recent decades, there has been an unprecedented massive flow of borrowings from foreign languages, primarily from English. This is where the favorable background and necessary condition for lexical discodification lie. I'm talking about borrowings that are introduced into Russian texts without translation, as if masquerading as ordinary words that supposedly should be well known to all Russian speakers. That is, we are talking about words such as “fake”, “Facebook”, “like” and so on. These words are literally filled with texts from ordinary magazines that are sold at any kiosk. They are aimed at Russian youth, the so-called creative class, educated people. But here is a question that is very important from the point of view of our discussion: which of these words can you safely do without?
The fact is that the appearance of some words in the modern Russian lexicon is determined by the state of our lexical system. Pushkin wrote about such a state: “But “pantaloons”, “tailcoat”, “vest” - all these words are not in Russian.” That is, the denotation has appeared, which means words must appear. And if from this point of view you look at the series of words I have listed, then it is quite obvious that words like “fake” will be superfluous. I consider the inclusion of this word in Russian speech to be a pure manifestation of lexical discodification of our language, because for this neologism there are corresponding commonly used Russian words “fake”, “fake”. The use of such words in Russian speech practice simply implements the practice I mentioned of unmotivated, I want to emphasize, replacement of Russian words with borrowings.
The goal is very clear. The speaker cuts off from his communicative circle the “marginal” people who do not know foreign languages; By using words like “fake”, he sends a signal to his addressee, in this case, someone who knows English. He seems to be pronouncing the famous Kipling performative: “you and I are of the same blood.” But such a stratification of society cannot be the goal of a literary language! On the contrary, we know that literary language is a powerful means of uniting a nation.
And now a few words about morphonomic discodification. This is even scarier. I would like to draw your attention to the tendency of conscious, purposeful inflection of words that could and should, according to the norms of Russian grammar, be inflected.
We all remember the bright, aggressive advertising campaign - it is still ongoing - of the German electronics retail chain. “Fantastish prices”, “Fantastish Markt”, “The ice has broken - fantastic brands are coming into our hands.” That is, what is the grammatical assessment of this “fantastic situation”?
I am very upset by the unceremonious introduction of a foreign adjective into the Russian speech field in the presence of a Russian correspondence. We have corresponding words: “fantastic”, “fantastic”. But here the morphological level of language is already affected, and it is very sensitive. This is the support of language, of the collective system. We get a new adjective - analytical, which is not mastered by our language system.
And our task is to somehow monitor this. See: “I’m celebrating the New Year with friends and Coca-Cola.” “Promotion from Nivea.” “Reasonable prices at Ikea.” And today, interestingly, among the people, among normal people, this continues to be the case, but for marketing purposes, something completely different is happening.
These examples are clear and deliberate departures from grammatical norms, and that is why we must fight these attempts at discodification. Of course, language must change, but for the normal development of language it is necessary that these changes do not contradict the very nature of the language. The opinion of philologists should be taken into account when deciding on the linguistic component of advertising texts that are distributed in Russia. By the way, it is very easy to change this, and without violating the interests of the company.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
The great philosopher Vladimir Solovyov said that every person must master three styles of speech: high, to address only God, medium, to communicate with the interlocutor, and low, which probably everyone should know, but use only in an internal monologue or dialogue with yourself so that no one hears.
Here Valery Mikhailovich Mokienko, to whom I want to give the floor, has prepared dictionaries of the very vocabulary that no one should hear, but it is used. How often, including television channels, we hear sound signals that mask these words. And what is the situation in Russia if the President of the Russian Federation pays attention to this?
So, Valery Mikhailovich Mokienko is a specialist in a number of languages, and he taught Ukrainian for a number of years in Germany.
Valery MOKIENKO
Professor of the Department of Slavic Philology, Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University
What is the tragedy of the Russian professor? While he is studying morphology, no one talks about him or asks him anything. But as soon as a Russian professor wants to explain to students the mysteries of Russian warfare, you can immediately become famous overnight. Working in Berlin, I suddenly felt some completely natural interest in this vocabulary. One day a very nice German student, Suzanne, came up to me and said:
— Valery Mikhailovich, I was in Moscow and my friends said words that I cannot find in the dictionary. And they asked me to read. I made a list, and every word I read made me laugh out loud.
When I saw these words written in calligraphic handwriting, the last of my hair stood on end. Suzanne's Russian friends gave her such a Russian pig.
After that, I was asked to read a special course on this topic, then they asked me to make a dictionary. But I never dared to publish this dictionary in Russia. But after one TV show I made up my mind. On this program, the journalists wanted me to say some of these words. After that, they asked me to publish a dictionary in Kaliningrad. I did not dare to publish it under my own name, but published it under the name of Professor McKiego, and I only wrote the preface. And I forgot. But then the need for this dictionary arose, and Tatyana Gennadievna Nikitina, a professor at Pskov University, and I finally followed the lead of the publishers and called our dictionary “a dictionary of foul language.”
The dictionary passed almost unnoticed, but then the State Duma issued a corresponding decree, and now we shudder when we are faced with this problem. Despite official prohibitions, there is no effect. When we watch TV shows, there is a beeping sound all the time, which every Russian deciphers, but foreigners do not understand. It seems to me that this is already hypocrisy. All European countries have dictionaries. For example, in German. All swear words are presented, but this does not force any of the Germans to swear at every step. This is a naive idea that a ban will lead to liberation from abuse. Will not work. Our goal is to explain what it is. I told my granddaughter that the word “damn” does not have the same connotations as she thinks. She is already 23 years old, and I have never heard that word from her again. Clarification is much more effective than prohibitions.
I remember that twenty-odd years ago Alexander Dmitrievich Shmelev even predicted that the Russian language would become analytical, because words like “cockatoo” appear all the time. I’m not even talking about coffee, because here we’ll immediately start quoting the State Duma. “Fantastish”, “das auto” and in our Russian language are not declined completely justifiably. This is precisely the result of the codification of the norm, because indeclinability has already been codified in the Russian language, “coat”, “cinema”, “kimono” and so on. However, in all Slavic languages such words are declined. In Ukrainian you can say “ya buv u kine”, in Czech “bylsja u kine” is quite normal. But because the aristocrats in the Russian academy spoke French, they could not afford to wear a French coat. And now this trend of prohibition gives us such an effect that we don’t even encourage “fantasy”. This means that this is precisely the result of codification, as it seems to me, and not vice versa.
For some reason, purists attack Anglicisms, but at the same time no one fights against the same Anglicisms, Germanisms, Gallicisms that come to us in the form of cripples. President Lincoln once said a phrase when he was elected, despite American law, for another presidency: “they don’t change horses in midstream.” One doesn't change horses in the stream. This phrase is known throughout America, but it has been translated into all European languages. And now, when the Zenit coach changed, it was written in large letters in our newspaper: “They changed the horse at the crossing.” And not a single Russian objects to such borrowings, although they have a more detrimental effect on the purity of any language, because they change the syntax.
Therefore, before you fight borrowings, jargon, and - I’m not afraid of this word - matisms, you need to think, wait, look at the speakers. And then recommend a set of all this that will be intelligent, dynamic and aimed at the future of the Russian language.
I think that the Russian language in its entire system, if it is used in all registers in a stylistically justified manner, will remain a real living language.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
You and I know well the power of words. We know that with a word you can kill, with a word you can save and lead the shelves. I would like to give the floor to Dan Davidson, Vice President of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, President of the American Councils for International Education. Dan ran an excellent program at St. Petersburg University for nine years. Her goal was a perfect Russian language, fluency for those Americans who have already done this and are learning from us. And suddenly we learned that this year the American government said: it will not finance this program. Otherwise, Russian speech will be heard on the territory of the United States of America!
Over the years of cooperation with us, Dan has done a lot to strengthen the ties between our countries. There are excellent Russian language textbooks prepared by Dan and his staff. Therefore, it seems to me that we will survive this temporary stage. I hope that Obama will then say: “I’m giving you money. Learn Russian language".
Dan Eugene DAVIDSON
Vice-President of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, President of the American Councils for International Education
We should shift our conversation a little towards products and learning Russian as a foreign language. I would like to quote from the electronic diary, which, by the way, is kept by every student of the flagship program. They are obliged to reflect, to think about their own language that they produce. This is what, for example, one student wrote in her electronic diary. “I am now very interested in expressing opinions in Russian in different registers, and in this regard I began to follow programs on Youtube.” This is such a dubious source, but it’s true that all the registers are there. “The thing is, I know all the words, but I don’t feel in what situations a particular word is appropriate.” This is where an explanatory dictionary, a new generation of dictionaries, will naturally help.
Speech culture is not translated, and neither is speech behavior. There are obvious examples that I came across just today. English speakers feel the need to say hello very often. We know this. And this repeated expression “hi, how are you” at every meeting, say, with a Russian-speaking person will definitely cause a response like “we have already said hello.”
The current situation, unfortunately, is much more complicated than what we are talking about today. Thanks to the mobility of people, global technologies and mobile networks, globalization has led to radical changes in the way we study, learn foreign languages and, ultimately, use foreign languages. This also led to the destabilization of those norms, standards, and conditions on which teachers were accustomed to rely and which served as a guide for students when entering a big life outside the school walls. These changes require more reflective and historically grounded pedagogies.
Considering the volume of interpersonal communication now taking place on the Internet, where, by the way, our students and our youth spend all their time, global technologies require us to reconsider the very concept of cultural authenticity. Under the Internet, not only the idea of speech genres, pragmatics, communicative norms and texts has changed. There is a new type of display text. Ease of comprehension has won over grammar, literacy and accuracy. This is called a code change. The spoken code turns into other traffic and code, called code machines in English. That is, there is a deliberate mixing of different codes and formats.
Pedagogy is accustomed to teaching norms, and we now propose not to limit ourselves only to the normative system, but also to use some kind of adaptive practice with its cultural and technological components, so that the norm is obvious, so that the ability to at least perceive what we live in remains. We need to be sensitive to increased semantic complexity and the issues and relationships behind it.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
Of course, of course, we understand that we have a Russian literary language and spontaneous speech. Spontaneous speech obeys completely different laws, but not a single phenomenon of spontaneous speech arises independently of language. Tallinn is a very special city for residents of Leningrad-Petersburg. Previously, just as St. Petersburg residents now travel to Finland, Leningrad residents often visited Tallinn. I am very pleased with the situation that is developing there. Just seven to ten years ago it was difficult to speak Russian with both young people and hotel workers. The last time, relatively recently, I asked how we would communicate, in English or Russian. All the hotel workers told me: “Of course, in Russian!”
Inga MANGUS
Director of the Tallinn Pushkin Institute, Chairman of the Estonian Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature
Russian speech abroad is in a slightly different situation than in its native country. In foreign territories, it turns out to be absolutely defenseless. If any advertising text in a foreign language is provided with a Russian translation with monstrous errors, then no one is responsible for this. And in this situation of impunity, the Russian language is subject to mockery in foreign territories. Literally beating, practically lynching. And the worst thing is that two sides take part in this execution. In other situations they are sometimes antagonistic, but in this case they show such enviable cohesion. These are foreigners - out of ignorance, and Russians - often out of indifference.
As for Estonia, all this takes place against the backdrop of the most careful attitude towards their native language. The Estonian language, whose native speaker is a tiny people, strives so hard for its purity and eradicates borrowings so much that other people’s words do not stick. The case of a “computer” was cited. There is no "computer" in Estonian. Even words like “business” and “businessman” don’t stick. And the whole country is sincerely concerned about the health of the language. She worries about the future of her national instrument of self-expression. The Estonian President announces word-writing competitions. For example, in the last competition the word that replaced the current “infrastructure” won. Moreover, six hundred people took part in the last competition. I calculated it in proportion to the population of Estonia and the population of Russia. About one hundred thousand Russian citizens would participate in the word-creation competition in the Russian language, announced by the President of Russia.
And sometimes it turns out that it is easier to preserve a small language than a large language. The Russian language, it seems to me, is being eroded faster due to the huge number of users and plus their territorial disunity. In a small people such as the Estonians, everyone has a sense of conscious responsibility for their language. If not me, then who? The Russian, it seems to me, thinks: “They will manage without me.”
It is curious that the Russian diaspora abroad often acts as such a small nation, which is very often also proud of its language, and it worries about its purity. A small example. The Tallinn Pushkin Institute organized rhetoric courses in the fall and invited a teacher from St. Petersburg. Imagine his surprise when, explaining the reasons for coming to the courses, the students said that they came not for the ability to influence other people with their speech, but for a tool to improve and preserve the culture of their speech. They came to seek opportunities to resist the inevitable influence of the state language. “It’s amazing!” said a teacher from St. Petersburg. “I am a lecturer and teacher with thirty years of experience, but in Russia my listeners have never had such high motivation, devoid of pragmatic goals.” And as a result, the rhetoric course, at the request of listeners, gradually began to develop into a course on the culture of speech.
The Russian diaspora abroad lives, in my opinion, so to speak, in a situation of linguistic provincialism, far from the linguistic metropolis. And, which is typical, sometimes this only benefits the language. But another thing is that this imposes great responsibility on native speakers and on professionals - carriers of the language norm.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
We have two Russian language councils: under the government and under the president. The government council discussed a very important project that is developing today. How can we find a university that, using new technologies, would give many people living abroad the opportunity to improve their skills and learn a language?
Such a university is now the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language.
Margarita RUSETSKAYA
And about. Rector of the State Institute of Russian Language named after A. S. Pushkin
We discuss the relationship between two phenomena: culture and language. We will probably never put an end to this issue. It cannot and cannot be posed, because as long as culture changes, as long as linguistic and non-linguistic changes occur, the subject itself will change and the objects of the two subjects will change. And therefore, people who are related to this area of knowledge, to practice in this direction, will never be left without work.
But we remember that these are not only issues of speech culture, not only issues of mastering the norms of using oral and written language. This is also an academic discipline, teaching is always difficult - issues of didactics, issues of methodology. And therefore it is impossible not to take into account the changes that are taking place in education. Lyudmila Alekseevna quite rightly said that the council under the government of the Russian Federation set the task of developing a platform, an electronic system for learning the Russian language in accordance with new, modern teaching principles.
And such principles today, of course, are the principles of open education built on an electronic basis. This education maximally includes requests to study whenever, wherever it is convenient and to the extent that the user needs.
The Russian Language Institute gathered a large team around the problem. These are 74 highly professional specialists representing both the practice and theory of studying Russian as a foreign language. All Russian leading universities are included in this team, and the development of a distance learning course in Russian as a foreign language is now being completed. From November 20, level A1 will be available in electronic format.
We really hope that this deep linguistic system will be successful. I would like to invite you to cooperate, because we understand: this product is being made primarily for you, to help you, to help everyone who is involved in organizing and promoting the Russian language abroad. This course certainly requires improvement. We really hope that by registering and becoming users, individual or collective, you will be able to provide your expert feedback, which will form the basis for further improvements to the system.
By the middle of next year, this course will be brought to level C1-C2, and I am very glad that the level of university philology is provided by the staff of St. Petersburg State University. This means that interactive multimedia resources, recorded and prepared by the best professors of St. Petersburg University, will be available to the whole world free of charge, openly, anywhere in the world.
The portal has a section for professional support for teachers. On September 1, the first distance learning course “Practice of Russian Speech” began working. And it’s surprising: without any special, targeted, widespread advertising, two and a half thousand students from all over the world signed up for this course. These are people who are interested in issues of Russian speech, teaching Russian speech, and norms of Russian speech.
More and more such courses will appear in the near future. Moreover, every university that has experience in implementing similar programs can become a co-author of our platform.
Lyudmila VERBITSKAYA
Sergei Malevinsky said, starting our discussion, how bad it is with dictionaries, how bad it is with modern textbooks. This is all true, but I would like to say that a lot has been done at the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg State University. And not only in philology. Representatives of almost all faculties participated in the preparation of any manual, as well as a comprehensive normative dictionary: mathematicians, sociologists, and psychologists.
In general, at two faculties of St. Petersburg University we teach students 160 languages. Several years ago I dated the Zulu king. When I said that we were learning Zulu, he was simply shocked, because he had never heard of Zulu being taught anywhere. They give us the opportunity to develop excellent methods of teaching the Russian language. And I tell my foreign colleagues who complain that they don’t know the language: come to St. Petersburg for two weeks. We have an excellent department, wonderful teachers who, even in two weeks, can, at a minimum level, of course, improve your knowledge of the language so that you can answer all the questions on the street.
This work has been led by Sergei Igorevich Bogdanov for many years. He is Vice-Rector for Oriental Studies, African Studies, Art and Philology at St. Petersburg State University. And also a member of the Council for the Culture of Speech under the Governor of St. Petersburg.
Sergey BOGDANOV
Vice-Rector of St. Petersburg State University, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Russkiy Mir Foundation
The topic stated in our panel discussion is related to a very important and very complex problem. We are talking about defining the national idea. How much has been said about this, but there is no result, at least preliminary.
In relation to Russia, variants of the national idea can have an economic, political or religious basis. In what direction can we move in terms of defining the national Russian idea? It seems to me that at present this idea is imperial in a good sense. That is, ensuring harmonious collective coexistence of the huge number of ethnic groups that inhabit the territory of the Russian Federation. This corresponds to the historical role of Russia. It was a crossroads connecting the space between the civilizations of the East and West. But ensuring this harmonious collective existence of different cultures, different peoples is a Russian historical mission, which is ensured by the Russian language and Russian culture.
It should be borne in mind that, probably, the greatest contribution of Russian culture, Russia to European and world civilization is classical Russian-language texts, primarily texts of classical Russian literature. The spread of the Russian language should ensure the widest possible embodiment of Russian culture as an integral and relevant part of world culture.
What do we have now in practice? In practice, we have a situation that contradicts this thesis more and more.
The fact is that humanity, and Russia in particular, has recently received an incredible instrument of collective existence. This is the Internet and social networks. It seems to me that we are now not ready for the global changes in mass communications at the turn of the century. Every member of society now has the right to a voice, to publicity. These voices began to sound, and the consequences of this spontaneous, unprepared, but accessible polyphony of voices turned out to be not only uncontrollable, but also largely unexpected. It can be stated that the intellectual, organizational, and communicative level of collective existence began to fall. And this is a reality that we must acknowledge. Previously, the right to speak publicly was reserved for exclusively trained people: a priest, a teacher, a writer who does this professionally. Now the situation is different: everyone has the right to speak publicly, and due to general unpreparedness and lack of editing on social networks, the level of collective existence is declining. In such a state, native speakers are unlikely to ensure the triumph of the thesis that I spoke about at the beginning.
What to do, how to change this situation? Imagine that there can be only one change: to introduce into wide public use a high-quality Russian-language text, edited, by the way, in the interests of embodying the Russian national idea.
By the way, there is also a positive moment. The fact is that now on the Internet the Russian language is in second place in terms of prevalence. It is significantly behind English, but nevertheless in second place. About six percent. This is more than any other except English. Accordingly, there is a platform to which you can bring high-quality edited Russian-language texts, both classic and new, relevant ones.
But it would be naive to assume that all Russian speakers who live on social networks will turn to these texts, see the world through them and learn to speak. It is unlikely. But here we have a chance. The phenomenon of the emergence of a new text, and to put it very briefly, it is a kind of hypertext with multimedia components, corresponding to the current medical, I would even say, state of our youth, it gives a chance. This is essentially a kind of technological technique. And if we now create classic Russian-language texts of our classic literature in a new format - and we already have some experience in this regard - then we will use the chance.
Elena KAZAKOVA
Director of the Institute of Pre-University Education at St. Petersburg State University
Language is not only a system of signs, but also a historically established form of culture of a people. According to W. Humboldt, “language is not a dead clockwork, but a living creation emanating from itself.” The Russian language has evolved over many centuries. His vocabulary and grammatical structure were not formed immediately. The dictionary gradually included new lexical units, the appearance of which was dictated by the new needs of social development. The grammatical system gradually adapted to a more accurate and subtle transmission of thought following the development of national social and scientific thinking. The needs of cultural development became the engine of language development, and the language reflected and preserved the history of the cultural life of the nation, including those stages that are already a thing of the past. Thanks to this, language is for the people a unique means of preserving national identity, the greatest historical and cultural value.
Thus, speech culture is an important part of the national culture as a whole.
Develop and maintain culture impossible without the help of the Russian language. The loss of language threatens the loss of culture. The Russian language is the basis of Russian identity in a multinational state. The ideal to strive for: harmony between national languages and the Russian language. The Russian language helps maintain the unity of the country.
So we need to create powerful resource base for school education. To make Russian language lessons one of the most interesting, you need good teaching and teaching aids that inspire teachers and captivate students.
Next - promotion new educational technologies, promoting the implementation of federal state educational standards. Since the one who is active develops, new educational technologies should help create conditions for the development of diverse activities of students. Teach activities in the process of the activity itself. Involve children in reading communities, literary clubs, literary games. Return Lev Uspensky’s book “A Word about Words” to school. To educate not with an authoritarian edifying monologue, but in dialogue, in the process of discussing complex moral problems relating to such values as friendship and love in Russian language and literature lessons. Teach children to have constructive dialogue. Only in this way, from early childhood, will we instill both the culture of Russian speech and respect for Russian culture.
At our university we have a program “Russian as a state language”. Teachers, doctors, including officials undergo it. But businessmen also came. A young businessman told me: “I want to be understood, so I came to you.” The guy is only 24 years old. He asked: “Is there a good textbook on the Russian language? Why is it so boring to teach Russian?” So my colleagues suggest: let’s create such an interesting textbook on the Russian language together. This is the only way to revive young people’s interest in the “great and mighty.”
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURY
1. Russian language of the Soviet period and the modern linguistic situation.
The historical events of the twentieth century could not but influence the history of the Russian language. Of course, the system of language has not changed in one century - social events do not affect the structure of the language. The speech practice of Russian speakers has changed, the number of people who speak Russian has increased, the composition of words in certain areas of the dictionary has changed, and the stylistic properties of some words and figures of speech have changed. These changes in the practice of using language and in speech styles were caused by major social events during the formation and fall of the Soviet socio-political system.
The Soviet period in Russian history began with the events of October 1917 and ended with the events of August 1991.
The peculiarities of the Russian language of the Soviet era began to take shape before 1917 - during the period? World War and finally took shape in the 20s of the twentieth century.
Changes in the vocabulary and style of the Russian language associated with the decomposition and fall of the Soviet system began around 1987-88 and continue to the present day.
It is interesting to note that the fall of the Soviet system was accompanied by trends in the speech practice of society that are in many ways reminiscent of the social and speech changes of the 20s.
Both the 20s and 90s of the twentieth century are characterized by:
politicization of language;
a pronounced evaluative attitude towards words;
the transformation of many words into symbols of a person’s belonging to a certain socio-political group;
the loosening of language norms in mass use and the speech of prominent public figures;
growing mutual misunderstanding between different social groups.
Features of the language of the Soviet era and trends caused by changes in society after 1991 have a direct impact on the current state of Russian speech. Therefore, it is possible to understand the problems of speech culture of modern society only on the basis of an analysis of the characteristics of the Russian language of the Soviet era.
These features arose in the speech of party leaders and activists and spread through
reports at meetings;
resolutions and orders;
communication with visitors of institutions
and became speech models for wide (in the first years of Soviet power - illiterate and semi-literate) sections of the population. From the official language, many words and phrases passed into everyday speech. In the opposite direction - from the vernacular and jargons - words characteristic of the low style and peculiarities of the speech of illiterate people penetrated into the language of decrees, reports, and orders. This situation is typical for the 20s, then speech practice changed towards strengthening literary norms, the educational level of leaders and the entire population increased, however, the norms of the Soviet official business and journalistic styles themselves came into conflict with the historical cultural traditions of the Russian language.
2. Grammatical features of Russian speech of the Soviet era
The grammatical features of Soviet-era speech consist in the disproportionate use of some capabilities of the grammatical system of the Russian language. They are characteristic of bookish and written speech; colloquial speech was free from abuses in grammar, although some clerical phrases could penetrate into colloquial speech.
Typical grammatical speech impediments were the following:
loss of verbality of a sentence, replacement of verbs with names (improvement, perfection, promotion, in one of the speeches at the meeting - impossibility);
transformation of independent words into formal official words, including
verbs (made an attempt, fight, approach accounting),
nouns (task, question, matter, work, line, strengthening, strengthening, deepening, construction),
adverbs (extremely, significantly);
piling up of identical cases (the possibility of a delaying effect of income taxation);
frequent use of superlative adjectives (greatest, fastest, most wonderful);
improper coordination and management;
incorrect word order;
template phrases that cause unnecessary personification of abstract nouns.
Examples of template phrases with abstract nouns as subjects are the following sentences:
The deepening crisis forces us to evaluate the industry's prospects.
The growing need for steamships prompted Sovtorgflot to raise the issue with the center about the speedy transfer of ships.
The merger of homogeneous organizations is intended to limit the number of suppliers.
If we highlight the grammatical basics in these sentences, we get a rather fantastic picture:
Deepening forces you to evaluate...
The aggravation prompted to initiate...
Merger means...
This elimination of a person from the text, the creation of mythical subjects, was sometimes explained by the specifics of business style. In fact, the reason for such a construction of the statement was the desire to avoid personal responsibility by presenting any situation as the result of the action of natural forces (deepening, aggravating, decreasing).
A striking example of how a word can completely lose its meaning is the following sentence: A lot of hard work goes into the organization and development of the electrical engineering department. If work is put to work, then the meaning of the word work is completely forgotten.
Already in the 20s, philologists drew attention to the problems of using the Russian language in newspapers and everyday speech. G. O. Vinokur wrote about this: “Stamped phraseology closes our eyes to the true nature of things and their relationships... it substitutes for us their nomenclature instead of real things - moreover, it is completely inaccurate, because it is petrified.” G. O. Vinokur made the following conclusion: “Since we use meaningless slogans and expressions, our thinking becomes meaningless and meaningless. You can think in images, you can think in terms, but is it possible to think in vocabulary cliches?” (Vinokur G.O. Culture of language. Essays on linguistic technology. M.: 1925, pp. 84-86).
3. Lexical features of Russian speech of the Soviet era
The formation of a new social system was accompanied by the following phenomena in vocabulary:
distribution of nouns with the familiarly dismissive suffix -k- (canteen, reading room, izizilka [Fine Department of the People's Commissariat for Education], ekonomika [newspaper "Economic Life"], normalka [normal school], stationary [stationary school]);
the spread of words with a narrow, situational meaning that existed in the language for a very short time (from a year to five years, sometimes two to three decades); outside the context of the social conditions of a certain period, such words are simply incomprehensible: anti-snizenets, lichenets, enlightener, sovkinets, trust worker, regime man;
the spread of abbreviations (Chekvalap - Extraordinary Commission for the procurement of felt boots and bast shoes, tverodezhda - clothing made in Tver, akavek - student of the AKV [Academy of Communist Education]);
the spread of borrowed words that are poorly understood by the people in newspapers and in the language of documents: plenum, ultimatum, ignore, regularly, personally, initiative (over time, some of these words became generally understandable, but the word should be understood at the time of use, and not ten years later);
loss of real meaning in words (moment, question, task, line);
the appearance of a negative emotional connotation in neutral words as a result of their situational use, which narrowed and distorted the meaning of these words (element, dissident, voyage, asceticism).
By the 60-70s of the 20th century, the general level of speech culture in relation to grammatical and lexical norms of the Russian language had increased significantly, the extremes of the 20s were smoothed out. However, the tendency to distort the meaning of words and introduce ideological elements of meaning into them remains. It is also interesting to note the fact that books on speech culture, published officially in the 20s, were subsequently placed in the special storage department of the state library and became available after 1991.
4. Functional and stylistic features of Russian speech of the Soviet era
The stylistic features of the official speech of the Soviet era are:
abuse of metaphors and symbols: struggle for academic performance, battle for the harvest, vanguard of the working class, on the linguistic front, against bourgeois contraband in linguistics, signal [convey], cleansing, stripping, linking, linking, loading, fouling, sliding, hydra of counter-revolution, imperialist sharks, wind of change;
abuse of epithets of majesty: unprecedented, gigantic, unheard of, titanic, unique;
the penetration of words from criminal jargon into newspaper and official oral speech: zaburet, kryt, linden, gravity, trepach, shpan (over time, the stylistic coloring of these words changed - the words linden, shpan, trepach became literary words of colloquial speech, the word gravity - an official term in medical documents);
Colloquial speech was characterized by the inappropriate use of clericalisms, sometimes distorting their conceptual meaning by shifting it to the objective meaning: a self-supporting jacket (an example dating back to 1925), cooperative trousers (an example dating back to 1989), a leather handbag, a monopolka ( drinking establishment, the conceptual meaning is associated with the state monopoly on the sale of alcoholic beverages introduced in the 20s).
Regarding the abuse of emotionally charged vocabulary, Prof. S.I. Kartsevsky wrote: “The pursuit of expressiveness and a generally subjective attitude towards life lead to the fact that we constantly resort to metaphors and describe in every possible way, instead of defining” (Kartsevsky S.I. Language, war and revolution. Berlin : 1923, p. 11).
A typical feature of the style of official and colloquial speech was the use of euphemisms, words that hide the true meaning of the concept: isolator (prison), prorabotka (crude criticism), seagull, too much (extraordinary commission), competent authorities (state security agencies), tower (execution).
S.I. Kartsevsky, A.M. Selishchev, and other philologists paid attention to the spread of cynical swearing and obscenities in society.
After 1917, attitudes towards proper names changed. Instead of traditional Russian names in the 20s, parents gave their children such names, for example: Decreta, Budyon, Terror, Vilen [Vladimir Ilyich Lenin], Vilor [Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - October Revolution]. Many cities and city streets were renamed in honor of revolutionary figures and Soviet leaders. The names of some cities changed more than once, for example, Rybinsk - Shcherbakov - Rybinsk - Andropov - Rybinsk.
Yu. Yasnopolsky wrote in 1923 in the newspaper Izvestia: “The Russian language suffered severely during the revolution. Nothing in our country has been subjected to such merciless mutilation, such merciless distortion as the language.”
Already at the end of the Soviet era, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, prof. Yu.N. Karaulov noted such trends in speech as:
widespread use of abstract words that have a pseudoscientific connotation, the semantics of which are so emasculated that they become interchangeable (question, process, situation, factor, problem, opinion, direction);
objectless use of transitive verbs (we will solve [the problem], we exchanged [opinions]);
violations in the verbal and nominal direction (prompted us, forces us, I don’t want to call on how good they are);
nominalization (replacing verbs with abstract names);
the use of inanimate nouns as the subject (inappropriate personification): creative work, national income, care for people, the image of a contemporary become characters in the text;
the tendency to smooth out the personal element in speech as much as possible, to increase the feeling of uncertainty, information vagueness, which at the right moment would allow for a double interpretation of the content (Karaulov Yu.N. On the state of the Russian language of our time. M.: 1991, pp. 23-27 ).
All these trends not only remained, but even intensified in Russian speech in the 90s of the twentieth century and are typical for the modern language situation.
5. The inevitability of changes in language in new social conditions
After 1991, significant political and economic changes occurred in Russian society, which influenced the conditions for using the Russian language in oral and written speech. These changes in the conditions of language use were also reflected in certain parts of its lexical system. Many words that referred to the economic realities of the Soviet era and ideological vocabulary have lost their relevance and gone out of active use. The names of many institutions and positions were again renamed. Religious vocabulary returned to active use, and many economic and legal terms moved from the specialized sphere into common use.
The abolition of censorship led to the appearance of spontaneous oral speech on air, and democratization led to the participation in public communication of persons with different education and levels of speech culture.
Such noticeable changes in speech have caused justified public concern about the state of the Russian language in modern times. At the same time, different opinions are expressed. Some believe that reforms in society have led to a sharp decline in the level of speech culture and damage to the language. Others express the opinion that the development of language is a spontaneous process that does not need regulation, since the language, in their opinion, will itself choose all that is best and reject what is unnecessary and inappropriate. Unfortunately, assessments of the state of the language are most often politicized and overly emotional. In order to understand what is happening to the language, scientific methods for assessing the favorableness of language changes are needed, which have not yet been sufficiently developed.
6. Scientific methods for assessing the favorability of language changes
The scientific approach to assessing ongoing changes is based on a number of well-established principles of linguistics.
It should be noted right away that language cannot help but change over time; it cannot be preserved by any effort.
At the same time, society is not interested in the language changing too dramatically, since this creates a gap in the cultural tradition of the people.
Moreover, people are interested in language serving as an effective means of thinking and communication, which means that it is desirable that changes in language serve this purpose or at least do not interfere with it.
A scientific assessment of linguistic change can only be made on the basis of a clear understanding of the functions of language and an accurate idea of what properties a language must have in order to best perform its functions.
We have already said that the main functions of language are to serve as a means of communication and the formation of thought. This means that the language must be such that it allows any complex thought to be made clear to the interlocutor and the speaker himself. At the same time, it is important that the understanding is adequate, i.e. so that as a result of the utterance, exactly the thought that the speaker wanted to convey to him arises in the mind of the interlocutor.
To do this, the language needs the following properties:
lexical richness, i.e. availability of suitable words and combinations of words to express all necessary concepts;
lexical accuracy, i.e. the obviousness of semantic differences between synonyms, paronyms, terms;
expressiveness, i.e. the ability of a word to create a vivid image of an object or concept (terms of foreign language origin do not have this property);
clarity of grammatical structures, i.e. the ability of word forms in a sentence to accurately indicate relationships between concepts;
flexibility, i.e. the availability of means to describe various aspects of the situation under discussion;
minimal irremovable homonymy, i.e. It is rare for such situations when a word remains ambiguous in a sentence.
The modern Russian literary language fully possesses all the qualities listed above. Problems in communication arise due to the fact that not every speaker knows how to use the opportunities that the Russian language provides him.
Therefore, to assess language change, the following questions must be answered:
Does the change enhance the positive properties of language (expressiveness, richness, clarity, etc.)?
Does the change help the language perform its function better?
A negative answer to these questions allows us to conclude that the change is undesirable
In order to have reliable data on how language functions, regular sociolinguistic research is needed, during which it would be useful to clarify the following questions:
To what extent do individuals belonging to different social and demographic groups understand television news messages?
To what extent do lawyers and non-lawyers understand the language of the law?
To what extent do industry professionals understand the new terminology?
How accurately are the terms used outside the professional environment?
How often does misunderstanding occur in ordinary everyday conversation?
Answers to these questions would allow us to objectively assess the effectiveness of using the Russian language in modern speech communication.
7. The need to protect the Russian language
Since changes in speech can lead not only to positive, but also to negative changes in the language, it is worth thinking about how to protect the language from unwanted changes.
Of course, the development of a language cannot be controlled by administrative methods. With the help of orders you cannot make a word more expressive, it is impossible to attribute a different meaning to a word, it is impossible to force people to speak competently if they do not know how to do so.
In protecting the language, the main role belongs not to administrative bodies, but to civil society and individuals.
Political parties (if, of course, their leaders themselves speak their native language sufficiently, otherwise it will turn out as always), public and scientific organizations, journalistic unions, and other citizen associations should take care of protecting the Russian language.
Today there are not many public organizations that pay attention to issues of speech culture. Organizations such as the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, the Russian Guild of Linguistic Experts, and the Glasnost Defense Foundation play a useful role in this matter.
The popular science magazine "Russian Speech" is of great benefit, promoting scientific knowledge about the Russian language and constantly publishing articles on speech culture.
It is very important that problems of speech culture are discussed with the participation of Russian language specialists. A subjective or ideological approach to issues of speech culture can lead to an incorrect interpretation of linguistic phenomena and an erroneous assessment of the state of speech.
Ultimately, the fate of the Russian language depends on each person. The state cannot check every word spoken and stamp it as “literate.” A person himself must take care of passing on the Russian language to future generations in an undistorted form. On the other hand, society should do everything possible to help every citizen improve their knowledge of the Russian language. State support for the Russian language may also be useful in this matter.
providing scientific, public and school libraries with new Russian language dictionaries and modern textbooks;
financing scientific and popular science magazines in the Russian language;
organization of popular science programs in the Russian language on radio and television;
advanced training of television and radio workers in the field of speech culture;
official publication of the new edition of the set of spelling and punctuation rules.
8. The state of speech culture of society at the present stage
After 1991, some positive trends emerged in the speech practice of society:
expansion of the vocabulary of the language in the field of economic, political and legal vocabulary;
bringing the language of the media closer to the needs of reliable coverage of reality;
bringing the language of notes and correspondence closer to literary colloquial speech, abandoning the clerical style in journalism;
de-ideologization of some layers of vocabulary;
the obsolescence of many Soviet-era newspaper clichés;
returning historical names to some cities and streets.
Changes in the conditions of public communication have a positive impact on the development of language: the abolition of censorship, the opportunity to express personal opinions, the opportunity for listeners to evaluate the oratorical talents of prominent politicians.
Along with positive trends in modern speech, negative trends have become widespread:
consolidation of grammatical errors as examples of sentence construction;
inaccurate use of vocabulary, distortion of word meanings;
stylistic speech disorders.
The grammatical shortcomings of modern speech are:
replacing personal forms of verbs with verbal nouns with the suffixes -ation, -enie, -aniye (regionalization, farming, criminalization, sponsoring, lobbying, investing);
loss of a certain meaning in words (progress, panacea, impulse, stabilization, exclusive);
piles of case forms (during the operation to detain an armed criminal, a course adjustment will be carried out in the direction of tightening reforms, about the plan of events carried out in connection with the celebration...);
replacing case control with prepositional control (the conference showed that...);
replacing the oblique case with a combination with as (sometimes this is as a concession, he is named as the best player);
incorrect choice of case (based on some materials).
Lexical speech impediments are:
the spread of words with a narrow (situational) meaning (state employee, contract employee, benefit recipient, industry worker, security officer);
the use of borrowings that are incomprehensible to many, sometimes even to the speaker himself (briefing, distributor, kidnapping);
use of abbreviations (UIN, OBEP, OODUUM and PDN ATC, GO and Emergencies);
ideologization of certain layers of vocabulary, invention of new labels (group egoism [about people’s demands to respect their rights when developing territories, to pay wages on time], consumer extremism [about the desire of citizens to receive quality services]).
The stylistics of speech (in almost all functional styles) today is characterized by the following negative features:
turning metaphors into new patterns (vertical of power, economic recovery), sometimes meaningless (biased barriers, Russia is sick today with people’s health, Russia occupies the main role here, local authorities are struggling with a lack of funds [here I would like to add: shortage is still winning in this unequal struggle] );
the use of words that hide the essence of phenomena (social insecurity [poverty], attracting companies to charitable activities [illegal extortions from entrepreneurs]);
penetration of jargon into journalistic and oral official speech;
abuse of emotionally charged language in official public speech
9. Causes of massive speech errors
The causes of negative phenomena in speech practice include:
people's trust in the printed word (the habit of considering everything printed and said on television as an example of the norm);
reducing editorial demands on journalists regarding compliance with language standards;
reduction in the quality of proofreading work;
the gap between the complicated requirements of the new school curriculum in the Russian language and the real capabilities of today's Russian school;
decreased interest among schoolchildren in classical literature;
problems in replenishing library collections;
the transformation of the 1956 “Rules of Spelling and Punctuation” into a bibliographic rarity and the absence of a new edition;
disrespect for the humanities;
disrespect for the addressees of the speech;
disregard for the native language.
10. Ways to improve the speech culture of speakers
If we take into account the importance of caring for language, then it is quite possible to improve the situation with speech culture. To do this you need:
explain to persons whose speeches come into the spotlight of public attention the need to respect their native language;
explain to media managers the need for high-quality editorial work on the style of published texts;
organize a Russian language advisory service;
promote classical literature;
provide libraries with new dictionaries and textbooks on the Russian language and speech culture;
prepare and publish a new edition of the official set of spelling and punctuation rules;
promote respect for the Russian language.
11. Methods for independent improvement of speech culture
As mentioned above, the main role in preserving the native language belongs to the person himself.
In order for the state of the tongue not to cause anxiety, each person must constantly think about what he is saying.
No commissions or federal programs will change anything unless people themselves begin to respect their native language, feel responsible for every word they say, and think about the meaning of their words.
Even the most complete speech culture course cannot provide answers to all questions. The language is so rich that it cannot be described in one textbook. This means that it is necessary to constantly develop your speech culture and comprehend the depths of the Russian language.
To do this, you can use the following methods:
reading classical fiction (this is the most important and effective method);
careful study of the necessary sections in grammar reference books;
use of dictionaries;
seeking advice from philologists;
use of Internet resources.
There are several sites on the Internet containing reference information on the Russian language, dictionaries, articles on speech culture issues and other useful materials:
http://www.gramma.ru/
http://www.grammatika.ru/
http://www.gramota.ru/
http://www.ruslang.ru/
http://www.slovari.ru/
Bibliography
Baranov A.N., Karaulov Yu.N. Russian political metaphor (materials for the dictionary). - M.: 1991
Belchikov Yu.A. Stylistics and culture of speech. - M.: 2000.
Vvedenskaya L.A., Pavlova L.G., Kashaeva E.Yu. Russian language and culture of speech. Rostov-on-Don: 2000.
Karaulov Yu.N. On the state of the Russian language today. - M.: 1991.
Karaulov Yu.N. Pushkin's dictionary and the evolution of Russian linguistic ability. - M.: 1992.
Karaulov Yu.N. Russian language and linguistic personality. - M.: 1987.
Kostomarov V.G. Linguistic taste of the era. - M.: 1994.
Russian language of the late twentieth century. - M.: 1996.