Lecture
…in the world there is only one miracle — language.
G. Genette
Natural human language has always been at the center of philology's attention. In the 20th century it is recognized as an object of philology.
Characteristic is the position of F. de Saussure (1857—1913) — one
of the greatest linguists of the 20th century, who articulated the significance of language for philology in its traditional understanding. Considering the relations between philology and linguistics,
the scholar states that philology differs sharply from linguistics: «Language is not the sole object of philology:
above all, it sets itself the task of establishing, interpreting, and
commenting on texts. This basic task also leads it
to engage with the history of literature, of everyday life, of social institutions,
and so on ...its interests lie almost exclusively in the field of Greek and Roman antiquities». Language is called upon by philology
in order «to compare texts of different eras, to determine the
language peculiar to a given author, to decipher and explain inscriptions in archaic or poorly known languages».
In linguistics, on the other hand, «language constitutes a whole
in itself...»1
.
Saussure links the recognition of language as an object of philology (more precisely, as one of its
objects) to the tasks that face philology as a science of antiquities, that is, philology
in the traditional sense.
Let us turn to contemporary philology. At the present stage of philology's development, the task of studying ancient
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texts is retained — in classical and national philology (in the latter — in the study of the language and literature of ancient periods),
and in work with newly discovered texts. Thus, in the 20th century in Egypt
many ancient Greek documents written
on papyrus were found. These documents had already been lost in antiquity. Papyrology arose (Ancient Greek papyros — probably
a Hellenized form of an ancient Egyptian word for «royal») —
an auxiliary historical-philological discipline, closely related to paleography.
In the 20th century, one more reason for language's relevance to
philology persists: within the sphere of philology lies the study of
the language of imaginative literature and the language of oral folk-poetic creativity. Language is the foundation («primary element») of literature. The languages of imaginative literature and of oral folk-poetic creativity have their own specificity
compared with the national language as a whole: the language of imaginative literature is based on the national language in its literary form; while the basis of the language of folklore is dialect. But
despite these differences, the language of imaginative literature and
the language of folklore are both l a n g u a g e: «...poetry is written not with ideas, but with
words» (Mallarmé).
Let us give an example. In the «Dictionary of M. Gorky's Dramaturgy»
(Saratov, 1994. Issue 2), a usage of the word
«thought» is recorded in a meaning absent from the explanatory dictionary
reflecting the state of the lexicon in the first half of the 20th century (Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language / ed. D.N. Ushakov. Moscow, 1938.
Vol. II): «thought <...> — g r e a t t h o u g h t s (periphrasis). Political ideas connected with the social order of society.
Kalmykova [to Shura]. And I am asking: are you capable of taking seriously a great and dangerous cause, great thoughts, everything
that is opening up before you? This you must decide once and for
all. Decisive days are approaching».
This and similar facts demonstrate the writer's ability to create contextual meaning for a word, to add to its
meaning, to combine meanings within a word, and so on. Such linguistic phenomena
fall within the field of interest of both linguistics and literary studies.
In the 20th century, especially in its second half, the specialization of language in various fields of activity is markedly developing
— journalism, advertising, politics, and others. Thus, alongside the language of imaginative literature and the language
of folklore, other varieties of language arise or develop — the languages of journalism, advertising, politics, law, and so on.
For example, at the turn of the 1980s—1990s, parliamentary speech began to be studied in Russia. Already at that time
genres of parliamentary speech had taken shape, such as the official deputy inquiry, the retort, the question, the informational statement, the discussion
speech, and others. Traditional genres, for example the report,
undergo certain changes. Thus, in the reports of Russia's first President, B.N. Yeltsin, his own personal attitude toward the problems under discussion is emphasized: «Until now
privatization has proceeded slowly and clumsily»; «We need
millions of owners, not a hundred millionaires»; «However difficult it may
be, the national wealth of Russia is sacred and indivisible!». «Generic diversity is connected not so much with linguistic canons as with the specifics of political life
in its multifaceted «human dimension»», it is emphasized in the collective work «The Culture of Parliamentary Speech»
(Moscow, 1994. P. 34).
Accordingly, new scholarly
disciplines take shape within philology: political linguistics, legal linguistics, advertising studies, and others.
Moreover, philology at the present stage of its development retains responsibility for solving the problem of understanding — the chief problem of human existence.
Understanding in our time is complicated by many factors
connected with language. Let us note two of them.
The first factor: since the end of the 20th — the beginning of the 21st century, unprecedentedly active processes of interaction between languages have been under way, their freer
«movement» in space. It is no accident that since the mid-1980s, discussions have been under way in our country about the role of
the influence of English on the Russian language. In the course of these discussions,
among ordinary speakers, often politically motivated,
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the following thesis is put forward: is the Russian language, as an embodiment
of the spirit of the Russian
people, not being destroyed by this influence?
This «complicating» factor requires broader study than purely linguistic study. It requires
an appeal to the broad context of the existence and development of
the language: it is important to understand both the specific nature of a people's culture and the significance of imaginative literature within that culture. Anglicisms
enter predominantly into those spheres of contemporary Russian
speech in which the corresponding Russian designations
are absent or are international. This has always been so,
for example during the period of struggle against foreign borrowings at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. The well-known statesman of that time, Admiral A.S. Shishkov, believed that
borrowings only harmed the Russian language. From his opponents he received a parody of the word-usage devices he propagated: instead of the phrase with a number of foreign
words — A dandy goes from the circus to the theater along the boulevard in galoshes —
its translation in Shishkov's style was cited: A finery-lover proceeds
along the promenade from the arena to the spectacle in wet-treaders.
Much time has passed since then. The Russian language has undergone
more than one foreign-language influence; but it has not only survived as Russian, but has also been enriched through the resources of other languages. So it is now. Let us give two texts. Their comparison will demonstrate
the fact that foreign words are used out of necessity (the reader
will be able to carry out the analysis independently):
1) When installing the Mail Reader program, we connected the additional library module of the Word editor, and now you
can recode mail messages directly in
Word.
Before launching the editor, once again copy from the
mail program to the clipboard the message you received from the mail robot in the encoding that your mail program does not read. This time we will recode it in the Word editor (A Modern Self-Study Guide to Working on the
Internet. The Most Popular Programs. Moscow, 2002. P. 195);
2) Sasha, a young man of about twenty-five, thin, awkward, sits on
the open gallery of the second floor and listens to birdsong.
Astrakhan, springtime. The gallery is old, running around the courtyard of an old house. Part of it was once glazed, the peeling frames are
still in place, but the small squares of glass have survived in only two or three
fragments of the pattern. Red mangy roofs, a courtyard trodden every which way and hung with laundry, an acacia tree. There,
within the foliage — two turtledoves — vyurr! vyurr! (V. Golovanov.
The Secret Language of Birds // Novy Mir. 2009. No. 1. P. 7).
At the same time, Russian texts are being actively translated into
English. It is interesting that in these translations, from the point of view of
a native speaker of Russian, inaccuracies sometimes occur, leading to an «adaptation» of Russian realia to the realia
of the country receiving the translated text. This hinders the English-speaking reader's grasp of the text's meaning.
Let us give an example. In translating the sentence «Vanka wasn't quite happy about something in the town hospital...» (V. Shukshin. Vanka
Teplyashin) into British English and into American English, the following situation is found: the Russian gorbol'nitsa is in both cases rendered by the English city. See:
Somehow Vanka didn’t like being in the city hospital (American
version); For some reason, Vanka didn’t like the city hospital very
much (British version). However, the meaning of the English city in these
national variants of English differs. In American culture, city is used to denote a small town; in British culture, City refers to a large industrial city (a metropolis).
The second factor: in the processes of speech communication, the role of intermediaries is increasing. Of these
intermediaries, the most conspicuous today is the Internet. In solving the problem of understanding, this intermediary demands a fresh turn to philology: the language of the Internet is one more language, added to
the language of imaginative literature, political language, business language,
and others. In this language, understanding acquires its own difficulties.
One reason for these difficulties lies in the fact that Internet-communication processes are affected by norms adopted in
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direct (oral) and mediated (written)
communication.
See a fragment of a conversation on «Skype» (A. and B. are talking)
A. Today is some kind of day of collisions: an acquaintance of mine
was hit by a car at an intersection! Fortunately, thank God, everything turned out fine, she's alive, her arms and legs are intact, she's coming to!
B. And they've announced at our place that spring has come and all the heating plants are switching to the spring regime (the fact that it's –28 at night doesn't count)
A. Well, I never!!
What a thing to do!
B. In the apartment it's fine anyway (+18–20).
A. There's one very nasty intersection in our city — that's exactly where she got hit, and she was crossing on the green light, I myself when I cross there — I don't watch the
traffic light, I watch for cars! And the car fled
the scene!
B. Take care...
Still, we'll get through it: the Sun is with us!
A.:) that's for sure!
As in the case of direct communication, several topics are discussed in the conversation (each topic is marked by its own typeface). However, the parallel discussion of several topics does not hinder understanding, if the discussion is conducted in writing (the text
must be before one's eyes) or if the «intrusion» of one topic
into another is not as deep as in the material cited. Finally, the piecemeal delivery of information, the «smiley» — these are possibilities afforded by the Internet.
But the matter does not end there. Works of imaginative literature published on the Web can differ considerably from
their «paper» counterparts. Thus, the authors of works published on the site proza.ru under the heading «miniature» classify as
miniatures texts ranging from 5—10 characters to 10 thousand
characters, texts that are monological, dialogical, prose, and
verse. Let us give a few examples.
l A brief miniature:
Don't sweet-talk my golden teeth (Pavel In. Luxurious
Lies).
l In the form of a dialogue:
— Oh-h...
— May I help you?
— If you could help me do something real,
with your own hands.
— That is precisely what does it from the outset — God.
— Rea-lly? (Sergei Odiniz. Dialogues).
l in verse form:
The last shot of sorrowful eyes —
— A double shot across the left shoulder.
And pain like a shadow. From words of farewell
The mind is molten.
Ho
t
! (Dymok. Hot).
The belonging of the cited texts to the genre of the miniature
in the traditional content of that concept is not beyond dispute.
It is no accident that literature published on the Web is called
Web-literature. «WEB-LITERATURE» — a form of creative activity based on the use of
writing, the final product of which (the work) can be placed on
nodes of a computer network dispersed in space, can be modified (edited)
over time, and be accessible to many consumers from different
places simultaneously» ([Electronic resource]. Access mode:
http: / / slovar.lib.ru / dictionary / seteratura.htm).
So then, the question posed in the title of this section — why
is language an object of contemporary philology? — has several answers: such is tradition; all the sciences that make up contemporary philology deal with language (this was said for the first time in Chapter 1); in contemporary philology as a whole there
exist key problems connected with language that can be solved only through the combined effort of the philological sciences.
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