Lecture
If humanistic culture as a whole is the path to the heart of a nation, then science is the path to its mind. D.S. Likhachev
The methodology (Ancient Greek methodos) of science, including, of course, philological science, is the study of the foundations and modes of acting upon its objects.
In the methodology of contemporary philology yet
another basis for the unity of the sciences composing it is manifested. To the thesis that
contemporary philology represents a body of
sciences and academic disciplines having as their objects natural language, text, and homo loquens (Chapter 1), possessing an interdisciplinary (= general-philological) core of knowledge (Chapter
2), is added the proposition that philology is a special way of
investigating its objects (Chapter 6).
Thus, the unity of contemporary philology is created by
objects common to the philological sciences, by a general-philological core of knowledge, and by principles of investigating these objects that are shared by linguistics, literary studies, folkloristics, and the philological disciplines. Let us consider
the foundations and modes of acting upon objects separately.
The research orientation (the foundation for acting upon
objects) in contemporary philology presupposes that there exists a philological (= properly philological) approach
to the investigation of the objects of philology. Chapters 3—5 showed the view of language, text, and
homo loquens common to the philological sciences, and the views specific to individual philological sciences — linguistics and literary studies. This is an illustration of the proposition that the same objects,
studied by the philological sciences, can be examined on the basis of different approaches: the philological approach, and, separately, the linguistic and the literary-studies approaches.
The philological approach presupposes that, in the process of investigating an object, one turns to both its linguistic and its literary
side, both to it as a text, and to the manifold manifestations of
homo loquens — as speaker, writer, author, reader,
interpreter, and so on, which is done, as a rule, in the context of
time and space.
Thus, in studying the work of V.M. Shukshin, the philological approach is realized in researchers' attention to three
facets of the writer's literary-artistic creativity: the linguistic, the poetic, and the semantic. The language of his prose draws on various sources: the element of colloquial speech, bookish
spheres (including business, journalistic, and scholarly), written
and song speech, the language of folklore, etc. Assessing
this fact from the point of view of literary studies allows one to «draw out» from the letter as a graphic sign the natural voice
of a person. A person's speech, including that of our author, cannot be reduced
to the element of colloquial speech alone (as critics sometimes wrote about Shukshin's stories). Out of the dialogues of everyday life, out of
the words of ordinary language, standing alongside words from other speech registers, a different world is constructed — a world of complex images. In
this world the reader may discern the complex spiritual searchings of
the person of Shukshin's time.
The philological approach is aimed directly at revealing
the chief purpose of philology in the life of the individual and society. This purpose, in the view of S.S. Averintsev, consists
in the fact that philology is a service of understanding. «As a service
of understanding, philology helps fulfill one of the main
human tasks — to understand another person (and another culture, and another era)»1
. Indeed, a purely linguistic study of V.M. Shukshin's literary-artistic work can yield only a list of linguistic forms: words, sentences,
paragraphs, and other speech structures in their relations to one another; a purely literary-studies approach can offer only a list
of artistic structures, images, and representations, likewise in their
relations to one another. Is this information sufficient for understanding the writer's work? Most likely not. Combining
the data of linguistics and literary studies allows the reader
(researcher) to discern the linguistic and poetic structures
of a literary text in their mutual relations, and to discover in the text a new reality, one that could not previously have been discovered — the artistic reality. It is on this basis that artistic meanings are discerned
in the text.
The philological approach presupposes taking into account the connections among language, text, and homo loquens as objects of philology even when
examining one of them (as a whole or in certain individual
manifestations). Thus, the subject under study is considered not in
isolation, but in its interactions with the others.
The modes of acting upon objects are the methods of philology. Modes of acting include the procedures for delimiting the object and subject of research, ways of constructing a hypothesis, and obtaining a result.
The concept of method is significant both for obtaining a new result in the course of practical activity and for obtaining new knowledge in
theoretical activity. In the first case, we are speaking, for example, of methods of listening, reading, speaking, interpretation, speech influence, philological support of virtual
communication, and so on, i.e., of methods of practical activity;
in the second, of methods of research activity, or research methods.
Analysis lies at the basis of research methods in philology.
The general task of both linguistic and literary-studies analysis is to find and establish a scientific fact,
to determine its place within the body of facts of the science (linguistics, literary studies), and to turn it into material for arriving at a theoretical result. It is on this basis that a theoretical result arises. Linguistic and literary-studies
analysis exist in philology both separately and as components
of philological analysis (see the reference to the analysis of V.M. Shukshin's literary-artistic work above).
The choice and use of method is of key importance in
the process of achieving the aim of research.
Thus, in solving the «school» problem of determining which
secondary sentence part a given word form represents in a sentence,
different methods are used. In one case, the morphological nature of the dependent word is established: a full-form adjective — an attribute (modifier); an oblique case of a noun — an object; an adverb — an adverbial modifier. In another case,
one takes into account the relations of the structure under study to others —
synonymous and/or antonymous ones.
Let us consider an example: The flowers are on the windowsill.
We solve the problem by the first method. We proceed from the morphological nature of the word form: on the windowsill is a noun in an oblique case, hence it performs the function of
an object. This conclusion is also matched by the question: on what? — on
the windowsill.
Let us apply the second method. With respect to this structure, synonyms are, for example, the following: are on
the windowsill are there, here are everywhere: both on
the windowsill, and on the table, and in the corner, and here, and there; the antonymous
structure: are on the windowsill, and not there. Let us recall the rule: sentence parts standing in coordinate relation
are homogeneous (coordinate). If this is so, then the prepositional-case
form on the windowsill is recognized as an adverbial modifier: an adverbial
form in this structure cannot under any circumstances be
an object. What about the question? Only one question can be posed to an adverbial modifier:
are located where? —
there, here, everywhere... The same question is also answered by the homogeneous word form in the oblique case: are located where? — on the windowsill.
Thus, the second method yields a different solution: our word form performs the syntactic function of an adverbial modifier.
Which of the two methods should we recognize as correct? If we take into account
that a word form in the oblique case answers a case question even outside its connection with other words, then the question on what? should
be classified as morphological; the second question, on the other hand, is
syntactic: it is possible only within the conditions of context. Conclusion: for solving the syntactic problem, we must recognize the second method as the only correct one.
Even at the present time, one of the traditional propositions of the science of science remains relevant in philology: «The method decides the fate
of the matter» (Academician I.P. Pavlov).
In philological research, the role of the so-called subjective factor is great. The subjective factor is the researcher,
who is located not apart from the object under study, but «inside» it, not alienated from the process of research, but within «the process itself.» From this follows the possibility of different interpretations
of the results obtained in the course of research.
Let us return to V.M. Shukshin's work. Thus, in the 1970s—1980s
the writer's work was interpreted as an expression of the aspirations of the rural inhabitant; from the mid-1990s it has been seen as an awareness of the present-day problems of the nation, a search for ways to renew
our country. These differences arise above all from the fact
that the researcher himself has changed: at the turn of the 1980s—1990s
he began to free himself from the stereotypes of earlier literary studies (literature depicts reality in its revolutionary development; in a work the social dominates
over the individual, etc.), and came to an understanding of literary-artistic creativity as free.
Philological research is conducted in the context of the humanities (semiotics, hermeneutics, communication theory, cognitive science, history, psychology, cultural studies,
art history, etc.), and draws upon philosophy.
The reliance on philosophy stems from the historical unity of the two fields of knowledge, which is recorded in the first parts
of their names (philo-sophy and philo-logy). In contemporary scholarship,
these connections are determined above all by the fact that philosophy has turned closer attention to natural language and other
sign systems.
Returning to our example, let us note that a natural
stage in the study of V.M. Shukshin's work is the philosophical interpretation of the data obtained by philology. It is precisely at this stage of research that
the deep layers of Shukshin's own personal philosophy are discovered, the tragedy
of the being of the rural person, and the hidden foundations of Russian spirituality (home, soul, beauty, goodness, man) are deciphered.
194 195
In philology and the sciences (and academic disciplines) composing it, methods of other sciences are also used — in borderline and interdisciplinary research (see, for example:
linguistics and philosophy, psychology and literary studies,
folkloristics and the theory of art, etc.). The philological
sciences themselves serve as a method of practical and research
activity in other sciences — in the work of historians on ancient and old texts, in the interpretation by philosophers of specialized (philosophical) texts, in the conducting of psychiatric
examinations by psychologists and physicians, etc.
Thus, the methodology of philology is one of the bases
of its unity as a branch of the contemporary humanities. Alongside the philological approach and methods in linguistics and
literary studies, the philological disciplines have «their own» approaches and methods: in linguistics — linguistic ones,
in literary studies — literary-studies ones, etc.
Comments