Русский язык на рубеже XX–XXI веков. Лексико-семантические изменения

Abstract

Lexis is a part of the language system that is most susceptible to changes and as such it reflects the dynamics of social processes. For the Russian society, the end of the 20th century appeared the period of substantial transformations in all spheres of life. Perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the departure from the social, economic, political and spiritual rules developed by the bygone era, the freedom of speech along with the growing popularity and increasing opinion‑shaping power of mass‑media with their repertoire of linguistic behaviours, technological revolution, the marketization of Russian economy as well as the development of international relations – all these factors triggered various processes that affected the lexical system. These include the falling into disuse of words that are archaic or obsolete, or whose referents no longer exist in the contemporary world; the emergence of new lexemes strongly connected with the components of modern reality; the return to the language system of items that were previously rarely used, such as words related to religion, pre‑revolution system of education, administrative units, or social structure; the emergence of borrowings from Western European languages (mainly English); the expansion of jargon and non‑standard lexis, i.e. the vocabulary that used to be of limited interest to the users of Russian. The above‑mentioned processes involve vocabulary that in the present work is referred to as revaluated lexis. The analysis of the items gathered consisted of the identification of their developmental tendencies accompanied by the account of semantic changes they underwent at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Research aims accomplished in this study had the following objectives: 1) to characterize general properties of revaluated lexis of modern Russian and its division into semantic categories; 2) to present basic processes that occur in revaluated vocabulary; 3) to analyse qualitative changes in the lexical category in question, especially the changes in: a) the whole semantic structure of the items under study; b) particular meanings of words (in the case of polysemic items) at the level of their denotative, emotive and purely linguistic macro‑components. The research conducted for the purposes of the study was based on lexical items that were excerpted from the dictionaries made in the Soviet period as well as from the latest lexicographic sources. The focus of interest was on the units that had been subject to the revaluation process signalled by the presence of appropriate stylistic and chronological qualifiers in dictionary entries. Here, the G. N. Sklarevska’s compendium titled Толковый словарь русского языка конца ХХ векa was found especially helpful in the excerption of exemplifying material and the determination of semantic and/or connotative changes affecting the units under analysis. The empirical part of the study comprises five chapters. The first chapter characterizes the development of the Russian language of the 20th century and defines the notion of revaluation with consideration given to different stances on the issue adopted by various linguists. The chapter also proposes a typology and basic categories of revaluated lexicon of the latest period in the development of Russian. The second chapter deals with the stylistic category of words that became obsolete in the Soviet period, e.g.: гимназия, губернатор, дворянство, Дума, кадеты, лицей, чиновник, as well as the words that have recently appeared in Russian, e.g.: брифинг, йогурт, компьютер, сканировать, телереклама, шоу etc. The third chapter analyzes the lexical units whose usage was functionally and stylistically restricted during the Soviet period. This included, on the one hand, the “bookish” lexicon representing the higher register such as гороскоп, инвестировать, контрактный, наркология, недвижимость, престижный, радиация, while on the other – colloquial and sub‑standard vocabulary like баксы, балдеть, зануда, качок, мордастый, попсовый, порнуха, тусовка etc. The fourth chapter gives an account of revaluated lexical items that in the Soviet period referred to the category of words hardly used for some ideological or moral and ethical reasons; the lexicon in question was organized into thematic groups that included “Religious Life” (e.g.: йога, масленица, поститься, причастие, секта, христианство etc.), “Modern Society” (e.g.: мафиозный, президент, продюсер, стриптиз, феминизм, ферма etc.) or “Sexual Life” (e.g.: гомосексуалист, порнография, сексапильный, секс‑шоп, эротический etc.). The fifth chapter discusses the processes of revaluation of the items that during the Soviet period could be used without any restrictions, i.e. that belonged to the active lexical inventory of Russian language of the day (e.g.: безопасность, валюта, казачество, легальный, программист, реформа, таможенный, цивилизация, экологический etc.). The analysis of the material gathered has revealed the following most dynamic developmental tendencies of modern Russian of the end of 20th century: enrichment of the lexicon with new lexical items, incorporation of peripheral, sub‑standard language (mainly terms, colloquialisms and jargonisms) into the lexical inventory of standard language as a significant contribution to the above‑mentioned enrichment, another shift of borderline between the active and passive lexicon of Russian, neutralization of the so‑called ideological markedness in the meaning of many lexical items. It must be noted that the above‑mentioned groups of revaluated lexis do not form closed sets of lexemes; particular items may have different semantic characteristics and hence they may fall within more than one group. The revaluation process resulted in the fact that the majority of words that were previously part of the passive lexicon transformed into means of verbal communication. All groups under discussion were characterized by a change in their semantic and/or connotative structure that more often than not accompanied the revaluation.