Russian Obedience From The Perspective Of The Official Language: Diachronic Aspect

The result of the selection was a list of nominative units of the "obedience" concept which are used as terms. The list includes mostly lexemes of the "docility" group, which are composed like anthonyms: "docility" , docile - indocile , an indocile person , disobedient , disobedience , mischievous , undutiful , a naughty person , naughty . The chosen nominative units are parts of the "obedience" conceptual field. The texts which we collected help to distinguish the types of official situations where the "obedience" concept was presented.

Lexemes with the meaning of "obedience" docility , docile were used in the legal acts to describe the subject and subject model of legal behaviour of a subordinate subject at a particular level of social hyerarchy, e.g.: a peasant in relation to his owner - in the Edict of 24 April, 1713 - "О учиненiи наказанiя крестьянамъ, которые отложились отъ владѣльцовъ своихъ" (Full law collection of Russian Empire (FLCRE, 1830 1, vol. V № 2668. - Here and below № is a number of a document in the "Collection" (Russian: Polnoe sobranie zakonov" Rossijskoj Imperii. Sobranie Pervoe: v 42 tomah)), a soldier in relation to a commander, 1716 (FLСRE (1830) 1, vol. V, № 3006), officials in relation to their managers - in "General Regulations or Charter", 1720 (FLCRE, 1830 vol. VI,), "Regulations or Charter of Chief Magestrate", 1721 (FLСRE 1, vol. VI, №3708), and whole subjects in relation to the authorities - in "Authorities to manage Coutries of Russian Empire", 1775 (FLСRE 1, vol. XX, № 14392). Social hierarchy is highly represented by the assessing nominative model an obedient slave (of His Royal Majesty) in the texts of the officials' oaths. Semantic and conceptual model of law included the nominative unit obedient together with the attributive civil functioning to prescribe general model of legal behaviour to people ("Regulations or Charter of Chief Magestrate"). The obligatory character of obedience is explicated in "Navy Charter", 1720 (FLСRE 1, vol. VI, № 3485. The norms stated there were used in civil law as well: "A manager should rule, and a subject should be docile " (The Book V about fines). Intent analysis, contextual and valence analysis of the lexemes used as the terms give rise to state that the legal texts contain the idea of obedience as a basis of legal behaviour. Legal conceptual system adapted the lexemes docility , docile , obedience - the seme "legal” appeared with the preserved initial meaning. Thus, the "obedience" ethnic concept appeared to be a basis of the "legality (legitimacy)" concept. Let us pay attention to the implication of the "legality (legitimacy)" concept. Even though Russian lexical system of XVIII describes the lexeme a law-abiding as "a person who abides the law" (Dictionary of the Russian Language, XVIII, 1992), it was never used in legislative field as well as the nominative units similar to it, e.g.: law-abide , law-abidingness .

High importance of the "obedience" concept may be proved by Russian official communication at all its levels which use throughout the whole history one of the most common documentary genres for subjects to apply to the managers or to authorities with plea to solve a problem. The "obedience" concept can be noticed, first of all, in the lexical presentation of the document genre. The documents of knyaz paperwork called zhaloba (a complaint) or zhalobnitsa (the same as a complaint) . In XV the term chelobitnaia (a plea) appeared in the paperwork, in XVIII the term proshenie (a petition) appeared and existed up to 1920s. The historical variants of the document names emphasized the hierarchy of the communicative situation when a petitioner demonstrated that he was ready to obey and hoped to get help from the superior. Zhalobnitsa (a complaint) (Dictionary of Russian Academy (1789-1794), p. II, p.1041) derived from zhaloba (also a complaint) "expression of the unpleasant feelings about an insult or harm made by somebody", to complain "to say to a manager or somebody else about the insult, harm or about that something went out of order"; a complainant "a petitioner, a plaintiff" (ibid). This terminology emphasizes the family-like relations between a knyaz and his subjects (Kachalkin, 1988, p.88). Chelobitnaia (a plea) (Dictionary of Russian Academy (1789-1794), p. I, p. 178) derived from Russian expression bit' chelom (lit. to hit the ground with the forehead) means "to make a bow" (ibid., p.174) and chelobitie (a noun formed after the set expression) "expression of respect, a bow" (ibid, p.178). Proshenie (a petition) (Dictionary of Russian Academy (1789-1794), p. IV, p. 1102-1103) derived from the word to ask means "to complain to a manager or authorities about an offense, to ask for defense" (Dictionary of Russian Academy (1789-1794), p. IV, p. 1102). Secondly, the"obedience" concept can be seen in the text structure of the documents. A chelibitnaia usually started with an appeal to a sovereign: i hit my forehead with the ground - literally "I bow". This formula was still used during the reign of Peter the Great (the edict "About Courts", 5 November 1723, FLСRE 1, vol. VII, No. 4344). In XVIII the petitions written to a sovereign ended with the formulas faithful loyal slave , then faithful loyal subject , loyal subject (The decree edict of Catherine II "About the cancellation of words and sentences in petitions to their Majesty and to special places for petitions: a loyal slave bows low, about their replacement by the words: a zhalobnitsa (a complaint) or a proshenie (a petition), to bring a complaint or ask for help", 19 February, 1786, FLСRE 1, vol. XXII, No. 16.329). Sometimes compound names like the humble petition were used in some documents of local and regional level. The text itself contained the formula I ask in the most humble way . As the petitions are the documents which move "up from the bottom", the formula structure which denotes the subjects of speech follows the scheme "where to - from". The document starts with the addressee formula as a name of a person or an organization, which has a higher level in society. Submission and humility of the author is expressed in the formula of addressee and addresser by this. Thus, the linguistic image of the petition's author used to be a part of the subject’s legal behaviour supposed to implement the ethnic stereotype of obedience.

The group of lexemes with the meaning of "disobedience" ( oslushanie (insubordination), oslushnik (a disobedient person) , oslushnyi (disobedient) , neposlushanie (naughtiness) , neposlushnik (a naughty one) , neposlushnik (naughty) , preslushnik (a nonobservant), preslushnyi (nonobservant) was more widespread in legislative speech and was more terminized. A greater amount of negative nominative units proves that legal thinking was focused on the assessment of illegal situations. First of all, the situations of subject-subject illegal behavior of the lower subject was regulated by rules at each particular social level. For example, the above-mentioned Tsar’s Edict, 24 April, 1713 contains the opposition disobedience – obedience, , disobedient - obedient , which characterises two models of peasants’ behaviour towards their masters. In this case the terminization of the words is minimal, their first meaning prevails; seme "illegal" is presented here because the words correlate to the term punishment . Secondly, these lexemes acted like terms for the group "offense" to regulate negative situations in different areas of law (state, criminal, civil). In this case the subject-subject model was implemented generically: the higher subject is considered to be the Supreme Ruler, the lower one can be any citizen, including officials. The degree of terminization increased because it was about disobedience to a ruler's volition, who had stated the legal norms embodied in the legislative document (" disobedience to Our Great Majesty's edict, " disobedience in service to His Majesty"). The specialization was provided by the correlation to legal terms such as: nakazanie (a punishment) , shtraf (a fine),turma (prison) , sud (a court), sudia (a judge) , pristav (a bailiff) , isk (a suit), istets (a plaintiff) , umysel (intent) etc. The code "Ulozhenie", 1649 (FLARE 1, vol. I, №1) uses variable nominative units like oslushnik - neposlushnik , oslushanie - neposlushanie , neposlushnyi which served to name the activity of defendant who prevents to do investigation and court actions. The Tsar’s Edict, 22 February, 1709 "About the clean condition of streets and yards observed by Moscow citizens, about the prohibition of rubbish put out and about the maintenance of the bridge" (FLСRE 1,vol. IV, № 2225) contains the words like oslushniki ( the disobedient people) - Moscow citizens who do not follow the precribed norm, oslushanie - their illegal behavior. The document "Establishments to rule the Provinces of Russian Empire", 1775, contains neposlushanie - a general name for insubordination to the authorities. The charter of 28 October, 1697 "About the prohibition for embassy and other officials to wear a rich garment" neposlushanie - a breach of the prohibition by the officials (FLСRE 1, vol. III, No. 1598). The Tsar’s Edict, 22 December, 1718 "About the assistants from different Ministries assigned to work in the Ministry of Justice sent to help in Senate" (FLARE 1, vol. V, № 3262) treats neposlushanie as a failure to follow the regulations by ministry judges. The terminologization reached the highest level, representing the "obedience" concept in XVIII because of the usage of the following lexemes: preslushnik (a disobedient person) , preslushnyi (disobedient) , preslushat’ (not to obey) , which are widely used in the same context with the words such as prestupnik ( a criminal) , protivnyi (resistant) , preslushatsya (to resist) , ( protiv togo uchinit’) to act against of smb ("Marine Charter"); we should note the similarity in the word-building models of the words prestupnik ( a criminal) / preslushnik ( a disobedient person) in the Russian language. (The Russian words have the same prefixes and suffixes) On the one hand, this fact proves that an offense is conceptually thought to be similar to disobedience, on the other hand, it shows that the direct nominaton of disobedience is particularly important. The seme "illegal" developed together with its initial meaning of "disobedience" Thus, the ethnic concept of "obedience" (in its negative form "disobedience") framed the formation of the concept "illegality (unlawfulness)" which was not explicated clearly.