New Russian Phraseology In The Era Of Globalization

Abstract

The article examines the types of metalanguage commentary given by writers in the works of Russian literature of the 19th century. Writer's metalanguage commentary makes the text easier to understand. We analyze metalanguage methods of introducing foreign language inclusions, ideologemes, important for the disclosure of the writer's worldview, dialectisms into the context of a work. The study identified the types of metalanguage commentary depending on foreign. Since 1960, having believed in the perspective and scientific and practical of the following factors: from the language used, necessary for translation or explanation of the linguistic unit; from the scope of use, with the author's semantization and when determining the type of unit and its relationship to it. The perspective of the research is outlined, associated with the comparison of texts of different stylistic attribution, consideration of metalanguage commentary when using sociolects, analysis of the nature of foreign language inclusions in the language of bilingual writers.

Keywords: Foreign language inclusions, ideologeme, metalanguage commentary, Russian literature of the 19th century, text understanding, vocabulary of a narrow sphere of use

Introduction

Serafima Alekseevna Khavronina is one of the creators and inspirers of the invariably young branch of Russian language studies, teaching Russian as a foreign language, Since 1960 she has been tirelessly working in this field.and believed in the perspective, scientific and practical significance of the new discipline, The fruits of this harvest are known to all Russian and foreign specialists in Russian philology for the reason that many of us studied the dialectics of Russian as a foreign language (RFL) not according to “Hegel” but from the textbooks of Serafima Alekseevna. Indeed, her textbooks were published a lot of times in many languages. And if we multiply 150 such publications by their copies and the number of readers, then the number of those whom Khavronina introduced to the Russian language is the population of an entire small country - KhavronoRussia.

It is known that the specialty of RFL has a special energetic charge, because teaching our language requires constant readiness and actualization of didactic materials especially that since the 60’s the language system has undergone drastic changes. And here Khavronina is always “in trend”, responding to the challenges of our time and reflecting them in her works. So, when in the early 90’s business communication became one of the linguistic dominants, she becomes an author of the works that described the Russian business language, educational materials and tests.

Moreover, even the titles of her books reflected the topical "spirit of the times" and the actualization of Anglicisms (resp. Americanisms). So, in "dashing 90’s" the textbook was called “Business Communication in Russian” (Khavronina et al., 1993-1995), and in publications of our century – “Russian Language in Business” (Khavronina et al., 2005); “Russian for Businessmen” (Khavronina, Gusman et al., 2005) and finally in the Washington edition - “Buisness Russian” (Khavronina et al., 2014).

Problem Statement

The words‘business’,‘service’, ‘businessman’ and even ‘businesswoman’ have indeed become familiar over the past thirty years, and the stamp of linguistic exoticism and a touch of negative connotation of their use in Soviet times have actually been erased from them. These words became signs of linguistic globalization, into which we rapidly broke into in the 90’s and which grew with the swiftness of a snowball in both our linguistic and extralinguistic space. Academic dictionaries of Russian neologisms state this mathematically exactly.

Research Questions

It is characteristic that the editor-in-chief of the three-volume dictionary "New words and meanings of the 90’s." Butseva focused her attention on the word‘business’. Any explanatory dictionary is historical, because it reflects the moving linguistic present. The old vocabulary in such dictionaries is adjacent to the new one. Neological dictionaries are historical in their essence: they contain only new vocabulary of a certain time, in this dictionary - the last decade of the XX century.

Purpose of the Study

The historicity of dictionaries of this type can be traced at least on the material reflecting the significant phenomena of modern reality - for example, ‘space’, ‘drugs’, ‘business’ with their derivatives. The 1960s of XX century were the formation of cosmonautics (1957 - the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, 1961 - the first manned flight into space and then - numerous flights of Soviet cosmonauts, 1969 - the landing of American astronauts on the moon). Dictionary of new words of the 60’s gives 16 “cosmic” words. Over the years, cosmic achievements have become commonplace, and in this dictionary (90’s) there is only one “cosmic” word, which speaks of the fading of the novelty. The dictionary of new words of the 70’s does not give a single word for the concept of ‘drugs’, but in the 80’s new words dictionary and in this dictionary there are 19 and 23 words on this subject respectively. In the dictionaries of the 60’s and 70’s there are no words with the first part ‘business’, in the dictionary of the 80’s there are already 2 of them, and in the dictionary of the 90’s. - 127. Truly: changes in life (tempora mutandus et nos mutamur in illis) → changes in vocabulary → changes in dictionaries (and first of all - neological) (NSZ-90, p. 4).

Research Methods

The material for the study was collected from New words and meanings of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s Dictionary and the Russian neologisms Dictionary. We applied the descriptive, the cultural-historical approach and the comparative method in this research.

Findings

Indeed, each “ten-years” very accurately reflected the expansion of such a marker of linguistic globalization as the word business. The material of New words and meanings Dictionary is based on the press and literature of 60’s-70’s. (NSZ-60; NSZ-70). They are completely absent there. In the ten-years NSZ-80, the first “business swallows” already appear:

‘BUSINESS CLUB’ Public organization uniting people engaged in business (NSZ-80, p. 76); ‘BUSINESS CENTER’ Commercial centre providing services to foreign businessmen (NSZ-80, p. 76);‘VIDEO BUSINESS’ 1. Business associated with the creation and distribution of video films, the production of video equipment and trade in it. 2. Figurative meaning. About commercial videos intended for the average man; ‘VIDEO BUSINESSMAN’ Anyone who is engaged in video business (NSZ-80, p. 110); ‘CINEMA BUSINESSMAN’ Anyone who is engaged in entrepreneurial activity in the cinema (production of films, their distribution, sales, etc.) (NSZ-80, p. 326); ‘NARCOBUSINESS’ Growing and processing of narcotic raw materials, transportation of drugs and trade in them (NSZ-80, p. 491);‘TELEBUSINESS’ Television broadcasting as a commercial enterprise (NSZ-80, p. 804).

And now - the Russian language of the 90s of the last century. Business lexemes and phrases powerfully master its spaces, as well as new concepts that they designate. A number of even complex words (of 127 derivatives), where the business lexeme is the first part that introduces the appropriate meanings, is truly uncountable:

1.Business related. ‘business lawyer’‘business block’.‘business town’. ‘business documentation’ ‘business consultant’ ‘business office’ ‘business conference’ ‘business culture’ ‘business news’ ‘business planning’ ‘business forecast’ ‘business deal’ ‘business reference’ ‘business handbook’ ‘business terminology’ ‘business services’, etc.

2. Related to businessmen. ‘business troops landed’ ‘business card’ ‘business culture’ ‘business style’ ‘business etiquette’, etc.

3. Related to business, businessmen. ‘business notebook’ ‘business beau monde’ ‘business meeting’ ‘business lady’ ‘business cruise’ ‘business leader’ ‘business elite’, etc.

4. Related to business training. ‘business discipline’ ‘business game’ ‘business class’ ‘business course’ ‘business courses’ ‘business lyceum’ ‘business preparation’‘business program’ ‘business internship’. ‘business training’ ‘business university’ ‘business school’.

5. Related to the topic of business. ‘business magazine’ ‘business journalist’ ‘business journalism’ ‘business edition’ ‘business reporter’ ‘business topics’.

6. Related to business terminology. ‘business dictionary’ ‘business term’.

7. Related to business class. ’business class’. ‘business salon’.

8. Related to business enterprise. ‘business system’ ‘business structure’. For many such words, the authors of the dictionary give a source: “from English in an adjective function. "

The word ‘business’ is not only actualized, but also detailed in phrases that are also Anglicisms, but in the form of half-calques:

‘small business’. Economic activity carried out by the owners of small businesses (NSZ-90, pp. 161-162).

‘medium business’. Economic activity carried out by owners of medium-sized enterprises (NSZ-90, pp. 161-162).

‘big business’. Economic activity, carried out by the owners of large enterprises, companies, corporations (NSZ-90, pp. 161-162).

‘school of business’. An educational institution that trains managers, administrative workers for entrepreneurial activity; business school.

The "operators" of linguistic globalization include the 2nd group of words and partially the 4th, 9th and 10th. The group of loan words is very numerous and various. In the 90’s, it became a kind (although far from supernova) enfant terrible, instilling fear in the adherents of the so-called “purity of the Russian language”. The authors of the Dictionary, not being afraid of reproaches in its "clogging" with foreign words and expressions, reproduce with chronicle accuracy what has become almost the core of modern Russian neology (Walter et al., 2004) in connection with technological progress, political and economic innovations, penetration of loan words into slang and colloquial speech.

Of course, the lion’s share of them are Anglicisms (resp. Americanisms): ‘aquabike’;and ‘Big Mac’; ‘organizer’;and‘offline’;‘public relations’;‘rafter’;‘Russiangate’;‘soundtrack’; ‘use’ and many others.

Perhaps even more calques are not always perceived by native speakers as loan words, but in many cases identified by the authors as such: ‘death chamber’, ‘software configuration’, ‘food basket’, ‘virtual basket’, ‘humanitarian corridor’, ‘currency corridor’, ‘short stock’, ‘short bill’, ‘short selling’, ‘short position’, ‘Navy SEALS’ (United States Navy’s Sea, Air, Land Forses), ‘coffee break’, ‘creative manager’, ‘golden handcuffs, ‘independent music’.

One of the powerful levers of linguistic globalization is, of course, the computer and Internet space. The implantation of the Internet and on-line communication has led to the abrasion of boundaries between the oral and written spheres of communication. Genres that were unknown until then to our society became popular in the media: talk shows, discussion exchange of views, interviews, social opinion polls on the air, direct dialogues of radio and TV presenters with listeners and viewers, the unceremonious breakthrough of advertising into the mass media space, etc. The Russian language reflects all these changes. Moreover, often computer terms are immediately morphologically and grammatically adapted to the Russian language, creating familiar word-formation chains. Examples are typical:

‘click’. Pressing a key (button) of a computer mouse or its analogue at a fixed position of the cursor on the monitor screen to mark an object, start the execution of some operations (NSZ-90, pp. 36-40);

‘clickable’. Popular among Internet users, often opened by clicking (NSZ-90, pp. 36-40).

and‘click’. Press the buttons of a computer mouse, mouse or its analogue at a fixed position of the cursor on the monitor screen to perform any operations (NSZ-90, pp. 36-40);

and ‘CD’ (NSZ-90, pp. 778-783).

Phraseology plays a special role in the process of linguo-globalization. On the one hand, in some cases, its foreignness is marked by one of the components of a set expression, and therefore it is recognized by the native speakers of the Russian language as loan words or semi-loan words. Here are typical examples of this kind of contemporary "semi-Russian" idioms:

‘blow below the pager’. Of unexpected trouble, often deliberately, in an insidious manner, which puts somebody in an awkward or embarrassing position (colloquial, joking-ironic) (NSZ-90, p. 40).

‘tiptop’ (colloquial). All is well, successfully, all right (NSZ-80, p. 816).

‘stock up on popcorn’. Expect developments with interest (Stěpanova & Dobrova, 2018, p. 312).

‘catch hype’. Use the hype to gain popularity (Stěpanova & Dobrova, 2018, pp. 423-424).

‘for hype’ (Stěpanova & Dobrova, 2018, pp. 423-424).

Most of the phraseological "globalizers" are not labeled by any of their components as adoptive, alien, and therefore are often perceived as native Russian idioms. For example, the fate of well-known phraseological units (lit. change horses in the middle of a stream)‘make major changes at an inopportune or dangerous moment’ and (lit. we are all in the same boat) ‘in the same (often dangerous or extremely difficult) situation; under equal conditions of existence’.

The phrase’ and the proverb appeared in Russian relatively recently: one of the first fixations was in the early 80’s. Such a “catch” phraseological reminiscence is caused by the popular drama “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream” (1980, “Mosfilm”, directed by G. Egiazarov). The catch phrase about horses is perceived as a native Russian proverb or saying by the majority of Russian speakers and representatives of the media. But in other Slavic and non-Slavic languages of Europe it is used with a variable degree of activity: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Polish. Ukrainian and Belarusian appear on the Internet recently and are perceived by native speakers as folk proverbs.

Their source, however, is the catch phrase of the American President Abraham Lincoln, the original version of which is. This phrase was ponounced by the sixteenth President of the United States (1861-1865) Abraham Lincoln (1809-1866) and thanks to his popularity immediately became a catch phrase (Mieder, 2008). The exact date and the political and historical circumstances in which it was born are known. The President pronounced it on June 9, 1864 at the Republican Party Congress in Baltimore (Maryland) on the occasion of his nomination for a second presidential term (Serov, 2003, p. 439). By origin, however, this catch phrase is an old German proverb that Lincoln emphasized in his speech. In Russian, the American catch phrase has expanded the semantic and functional area of its use in comparison with the original source: it already characterizes the change of coaches in the sports environment, and the change of various technical devices, and even the dangerous desire to change husbands. Although the semantic difference is small, but it testifies to the development of a catch phrase in Russian linguistic and social conditions.

Expression is a kind of symbol of political and economic globalization. Under the influence of "new thinking", it came during perestroika to the Russian mass media as a sign of everyone’s involvement in responsibility for everything. The first stable uses of the phrase are found in interviews and other public speeches of Gorbachev.

The semantic and associative stability of the new expression is largely ensured by the transparency of its internal form. The image of a lifeboat in the element of political and economic storms is so effective that it is rather difficult to destroy it with projections into other associative spheres. At the same time, however, along with the phraseological unit a number of idioms are used, the core of which is the words or: ‘about a collapse, a complete failure of some kind campaign, social process’, ‘bring some positive political processes, a new state system, etc. to crash’,‘to shake some structure of power, leading to a weakening of the state’, ‘to complicate some conflict situation’, ‘do not take advantage of the opportunity, miss the chance’ etc. Although all of them bear the semantic imprint of expression, not all of them are its direct derivatives and not all of them can be called well-established independent phraseological units in modern Russian.

The expression and its variants are a journalistic cliché that widely used in the European and American press: English, German, French, etc. We must mention that this is Americanism with very deep European roots. It goes back to the Latin and has, according to historians of ancient catch words, the particular author. He is considered to be Marcus Tullius Cicero, in whose speeches this turn was initially associated with the popular metaphor of the political “ship of state”, as well as with the characterization of solidarity in the political arena. You can find it in Aristophanes also. Because of the popularity of the collection of proverbs by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536) “Adagia”, this proverb has been translated into many European languages.

Despite its ancient origin, the ways of penetration of the Latin proverb into modern European languages are different. Directly from the collection of Erasmus of Rotterdam, it was adopted early in the English language and became widespread in the United States. In Danish, German or French, it only gets in after 1945 due to the influence of the Anglo-American language and culture. This expression is Americanism in modern Russian as well, which has actively spread in the press thanks to perestroika. Born in the depths of the political rhetoric of the times of Cicero and entrenched in the books of the European Middle Ages, it unexpectedly revived and became more active in the American press, and from there returned updated to post-war Europe. The policy of “new thinking” made it relevant in Russia as well. With the loss of faith in a prosperous economic and political voyage with the West “in the same boat”, however, it gradually loses its pathetic charge, also degenerates into a playful advertising video (Mokienko, 1997, pp. 98-107; Mokienko, 2000, pp. 142-145).

Examples of this kind of tracing of European idioms are numerous, and each of them (for example,‘white collars’,‘blue berets’,‘soap opera’, ‘cherry on top’, etc.) requires a special linguistic analysis. All of them are active tools of globalization in our language space. Some of them, despite their figurative transparency, are a kind of etymological mystery, because they burst into modern Russian speech unexpectedly, energetically and from nowhere.

Conclusion

You can, of course, have different attitudes to this kind of innovation, or completely dismiss them. But in modern conditions they also reflect the process of globalization of the modern language system, in the melting pot of which one’s own and another’s, compatible and incompatible are amalgamated. After all, after such a melting down, some linguistic units may even acquire the status of linguistic signs of the times, as recently happened with Dmitry Medvedev’s half-slang catch phrase (lit. to nightmare business) ‘severely restrict doing business’ (Grachev, 2003, p. 443; Mokienko & Nikitina, 2000, p. 288).

So the combination of the slang verb‘nightmare’ with the already familiar Americanism ‘business’ became a landmark appeal of our former prime minister not to interfere with the development of domestic business. Let us wish Serafima Alekseevna Khavronina that both the current leadership of the country and the heads of all the numerous publishing houses where her books are published never “nightmare her business”. In other words, we wish the 100th edition of the Business Russian textbook would be published by her centenary - like many other textbooks.

Acknowledgments

This paper is written within the framework of the project «A man and society in the mirror of the new Russian phraseology» (19-012-00214) funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR).

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