The Thematic Field “China” In Geographical Periodicals Of The XIX Century

Abstract

The XIX century may be called the continuation of the geographical discoveries’ epoch in a certain sense. This is the time of dynamic development of trade connections with bordering countries and the fight for influence on the territories of newly discovered countries. The rise of interest to pop science journalism in the mid-XIX century is not accidental and the future direction of travel-journalism is formed within this branch. For example, the official printed organ of the Russian Geographic Society “Notes of the Empire Russian Geographic Society” is quite interesting. Peculiarities of presentation of information about the country allow considering the state interests connected with the whole country. The middle of the century is the time of contradiction on the external political ground between the Russian Empire and England which ended with the Crimean War. Within the present study we suggest considering the peculiarities of demanded nominations within the thematic field “China” in the aspect of key social interests reflected in them. The English sovereignty in this region was percept as a challenge, and Russia needed data to establish the perspectives of development of trade relations in the future. Here come the thematic specifics of the vocabulary, involved in the presentation of China in this journal’s articles. The thematic dominant of these texts is trade.

Keywords: China, lexical representation, Notes of the Empire Russian Geographical Society, thematic field, vocabulary history, XIX century

Introduction

The XIX century is the time of the Russian national self-identity rise. This is reflected in the following processes: the Russian language system is formed on the national foundation (Kalinovskaya & Starovoitova, 2016; Kalinovskaya, 2018; Sorokin, 1965; Vinogradov, 1982), the folk language study is experienced and the folk culture is deeply considered (Dahl’s dictionary), there appears the understanding of borders between “ours” and “theirs” due to the geographical discoveries both in the Russian Empire and abroad. This period, in a certain sense, may be called the continuation of the geographical discoveries epoch which contribute to the development of the state economy: the trade connections with bordering countries are actively developed, the newly found countries territories are fought to be influenced. The geographical searches are focused on the elimination of stereotypical presentations about mysterious people, and the information checked and written by scholars about various lands is highly valued. This is greatly assisted by the rise of periodicals (Dyagileva, 2015, 2016), including pop science (Gromova & Balashova, 2017), which were focused on the representation of geographical discoveries, correction and clearance of existing knowledge. This time may be considered the beginning of formation of travel-journalism, which presents the basic information about the newly discovered borders, countries, people (Kislova & Erther, 2019). One of such editions is the official printed organ of the Russian Geographic Society “Notes of the Empire’s Russian Geographic Society” (further referred to as NERGS).

Problem Statement

The lexical representation of information about a country allows judging which interests are followed by the government of this country. In XIX century, the pop science journalism performed a whole number of tasks, not connected with education: it informed about the state politics, it transmitted the governmental interests, drew attention of business social circles to the problems of state expansion. Due to this, NERGS reflected not only scientific interests, but the interests of state politics (Pavlov, 2010).

It must be considered that the XIX century may be called the rise of scientific knowledge, this period saw the final formation of the most significant for modern society concepts and theories (Darwin, 1859), which pushed the development of civilization in various spheres. The pathfinder for the way of knowledge was often the word with its nominative function: the named is already known (Shcheglova, 2020). It is quite common for this time to create lists of words, accompanying the geographical description of a territory (Starovoitova, 2017). This reflects the whole feature of the epoch – faith and love for word as the value in itself (it is enough to remember how much honor was valued (Katsura, 1999): one might pay his life for words). The word, being a value in itself, is the reflection of the world view of contemporaries, so the peculiarities of word usage, usage meanings, presence of connotations shows the social attitude to a subject, a kind of interest for that subject from the government and specialist of various spheres (Leonard et al., 2019).

In this sense it is extremely interesting to consider the thematic field “China”. In the mid-XIX century this is a closed state which is nevertheless considered as a potential trade partner.

Research Questions

The main questions which the authors pose are:

• the content and stratification of the thematic field “China” in NERGS articles;
• pragmatics of use of lexical means of this thematic field in NERGS articles about China;
• semantic dominants of the representation of the region in NERGS;
• connection between the content of the thematic field, the nature of use of forming units and the external Russian politics in the corresponding period.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is the determination of lexical means of representation of China in NERGS articles as well as distinguishing the connection of external political interests of the Russian Empire in this region and the content of the thematic field.

Research Methods

The main research method is diachronic with the elements of synchronic one: lexical units are studied in the context of the corresponding political background; the lexemes themselves are studied in the aspect of lexical semantic analysis.

Findings

The publications devoted to the description of those territories which are in the close focus of external political attention of Russia are extremely interesting. The middle of the century is the time of contradiction on the external political ground between the Russian Empire and England which finally ended with the Crimean War. A special sphere of interest for both countries are the states which have new sale markets in the forming system of world trade. Russia and China are connected with long trade relations, but they were mostly private (Kyakhta) (Akhmadeev & Gayazov, 2017; Kalvina & Kuras, 2019; Tagarov, 2015). The sovereignty of England in this region was perceived as a challenge; Russia needed information to establish the perspectives of the development of trade relations in the future. Here comes the thematic specification of vocabulary, exploited in the representation of China in NERGS articles.

The thematic field “China” in NERGS is presented by classic segments: geography, customs and traditions, flora, fauna. But as it often happens in publications all these fragments strictly follow one main idea. This is the idea of trade in the texts under analysis.

When we speak about the geographical position of the country, its climate, relief etc., the focus is made on comfortable travels with (small) caravans, road quality, including transportation by camels (!), the whole convenience of trade communications. The people’s customs and nature are described only concerning the trade, attitude to money, goods, foreigners as potential buyers.

Conclusion

Summing up the study we may draw the following conclusions:

• pop science direction of journalism was greatly developed in the mid-XIX century with the appearance of periodicals aimed at describing certain fields of knowledge
• consideration of peculiarities of single territory representation in the geographical edition demonstrates both the system of presentations about the region in a certain period of time and the dependency from the governmental external political interests of the Russian Empire;
• China in the mid-XIX century was interesting mostly from the view point of expanding the external market in the situation of formation of the world economy, thus the trade became the thematic dominant for the NERGS articles about this country;
• according to this thematic dominant the thematic field China is formed in this edition: the main thematic groups of vocabulary are “trade ways”, “trade-money relations”, “transportation means”;
• the thematic fields which do not directly refer to trade are influenced by the dominating theme, which is reflected in selection of lexical means and the nature of their use.

Acknowledgments

The article is written with the financial support of the RFFR grant (The Russian language in the media space of the XIX century, No. 20-012-00413\20).

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