Sphere of use and environment of language use. Vocabulary of limited scope

The vocabulary of the Russian language, depending on the nature of its functioning, is divided into two large groups: generally used and limited by the sphere of use. The first group includes words whose use is not limited either by the territory of distribution or by the type of activity of people; it forms the basis of the vocabulary of the Russian language. This includes the names of concepts and phenomena from different areas of social life: political, economic, cultural, everyday life, which gives grounds to identify various thematic groups of words in the national vocabulary. Moreover, all of them are understandable and accessible to every native speaker and can be used in a wide variety of conditions, without any limitations.

Vocabulary of a limited scope of use is widespread within a certain area or among people united by profession, social characteristics, common interests, pastime, etc. Such words are used mainly in unstandardized oral speech. However, artistic speech does not refuse to use them: writers find in them means for stylizing artistic narration and creating speech characteristics of heroes.

Dialectisms, their types

Russian folk dialects, or dialects (gr. dialektos - adverb, dialect), contain a significant number of original folk words, known only in a certain area. Thus, in the south of Russia, a stag is called an ukhvat, a clay pot is called a makhotka, a bench is called an uslon, etc. Dialectisms exist mainly in the oral speech of the peasant population; In an official setting, speakers of dialects usually switch to the common language, the conductors of which are school, radio, television, and literature.

The dialects reflect the original language of the Russian people; in certain features of local dialects, relict forms of Old Russian speech have been preserved, which are the most important source for restoring historical processes that once affected our language.

Dialects differ from the national national language in various ways - phonetic, morphological, special word usage and completely original words unknown to the literary language. This gives grounds to group dialectisms of the Russian language according to their common characteristics.

1. Lexical dialectisms are words that are known only to native speakers of the dialect and have neither phonetic nor word-forming variants outside of it. For example, in southern Russian dialects there are the words buryak (beetroot), tsibulya (onion), gutorit (to speak); in the northern ones - sash (belt), basque (beautiful), golitsy (mittens). In common language, these dialectisms have equivalents that name identical objects and concepts. The presence of such synonyms distinguishes lexical dialectisms from other types of dialect words.
2. Ethnographic dialectisms are words that name objects known only in a certain area: shanezhki - pies prepared in a special way; drankki - special potato pancakes; nardek – watermelon molasses; manarka – a type of outerwear; poneva - a type of skirt, etc. Ethnographic words do not and cannot have synonyms in the common language, since the objects themselves denoted by these words have a local distribution. As a rule, these are household items, clothing, foods, plants, etc.
3. Lexico-semantic dialectisms are words that have an unusual meaning in the dialect: bridge - floor in a hut; lips – mushrooms of all varieties, except white ones; shout (someone) – call; himself - owner, husband, etc. Such dialectisms act as homonyms for common words used with their inherent meaning in the language.
4. Phonetic dialectisms are words that have received a special phonetic design in the dialect: tsai (tea), chep (chain) - consequences of “tsokanya” and “chokanya”, characteristic of northern dialects; hverma (farm), bamaga (paper), pasport (passport), zhist (life) and so on.
5. Derivational dialectisms are words that have received a special affix design in the dialect: peven (rooster), guska (goose), telok (calf), strawberry (strawberry), brotan (brother), shuryak (brother-in-law), darma (free), zavsegda (always) ), otkul (from), pokeda (for now), evonny (his), ikhniy (theirs), etc.
6. Morphological dialectisms are forms of inflection not characteristic of the literary language: soft endings for verbs in the 3rd person (to go, to go); the ending -am for nouns in the instrumental case of the plural (under the pillars); ending e for personal pronouns genitive case singular: for me, for you, etc.

Dialectal features are also characteristic of the syntactic level and the phraseological level, but they do not form the subject of studying the lexical system of a language.

The meaning of dialectisms in Russian

Throughout the history of the Russian literary language, its vocabulary has been replenished with dialectisms. Among the words that go back to dialect sources, there are interstyle, neutral ones: strawberry, plow, smile, very, and there are words with a bright emotional coloring: nonsense, trouble, clumsy, boring, mumble, take a nap. Most dialectisms are associated with the life and way of life of the Russian peasantry, so many of the words of these thematic groups in modern literary language are dialectal in origin: farm laborer, grain grower, plowing, harrowing, greens, plow, harrow, spindle, mower, milkmaid, etc. Many of these dialectisms have entered the literary language in our time - initiative, new settler, hype, craftsman.

Particularly characteristic of modern language processes is the replenishment of vocabulary with ethnographisms. Thus, in the 50–60s, the Siberian ethnographisms of pad, ravine, sludge, etc. were mastered in the literary language, and even earlier - taiga, hill, eagle owl. (It was these words that once served as the reason for M. Gorky’s speech against writers’ passion for “local sayings,” but the language accepted them, and they are given in dictionaries without restrictive marks.)

One of the ways dialectisms penetrate into the common language is their use by writers who depict the life of the people, trying to convey local flavor when describing the Russian village, and create vivid speech characteristics of villagers. The best Russian writers turned to dialect sources: I. A. Krylov, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy and many others. Turgenev, for example, often contains words from the Oryol and Tula dialects: bolshak, buchilo, lekarka, potion, paneva, gutorit, etc.; He explained dialectisms incomprehensible to the reader in notes.

Modern writers also willingly use dialectisms when describing village life, landscapes, and when conveying the speech patterns of their heroes: All evenings, and even nights, [the children] sit at the little fires, speaking in the local language, and bake opalikhi, that is, potatoes (Abr.) ; “Don’t eat, that’s why you’re weak,” the old woman remarked. - Maybe we’ll chop the trigger and make some broth? It's delicious and fresh... - No need. And we won’t eat, but we’ll decide to cut the trigger... - At least don’t fidget now!.. He’s standing there with one foot, and he’s making some noise (Shuksh.).

It is necessary to distinguish, on the one hand, from the “quotational” use of dialectisms, when the writer introduces them as a different style element and the reader understands that this is the speech of the characters, not the author; and, on the other hand, the use of dialectisms on equal terms with the vocabulary of a literary language as stylistically unambiguous lexical means. The quotative use of dialecticisms in a literary text is usually stylistically motivated if the author maintains a sense of proportion and does not get carried away with local words that are incomprehensible to the reader, explaining those dialecticisms that may complicate perception. The desire to introduce dialecticisms into artistic speech on equal terms with literary vocabulary most often receives a negative assessment. Let us refer, for example, to poetic lines, the meaning of which may remain a mystery to the reader: Belozor swam in the distance; The slope with the screw is antagonizing...

Sometimes a writer is guided by the criterion of accessibility and understandability of the text and therefore uses dialectisms that do not require explanation. But this leads to the fact that works of art the same dialect words are often repeated, which have already become essentially “all-Russian” and have lost connection with a specific folk dialect. The introduction of dialectisms from this circle into a literary text is no longer perceived as an expression of the author’s individual style. Therefore, word artists must go beyond the “interdialectal” vocabulary and look for their speech colors in local dialects.

Terminological and professional vocabulary

The use of terminological and professional vocabulary used by people of the same profession, working in the same field of science and technology, is socially limited. Terms and professionalisms are given in explanatory dictionaries with the mark “special”; sometimes the scope of use of a particular term is indicated: physics, medicine, mathematics, astronomer. etc.

Each area of ​​knowledge has its own terminological system.

Terms are words or phrases naming special concepts of any sphere of production, science, or art. Each term is necessarily based on a definition (definition) of the reality it denotes, due to which the terms represent an accurate and at the same time concise description of an object or phenomenon. Each branch of knowledge operates with its own terms, which form the essence of the terminological system of this science.

As part of the terminological vocabulary, several “layers” can be distinguished, differing in the sphere of use and the characteristics of the designated object.

1. First of all, these are general scientific terms that are used in various fields of knowledge and belong to the scientific style of speech as a whole: experiment, adequate, equivalent, predict, hypothetical, progress, reaction, etc. These terms form a common conceptual fund of various sciences and have the highest frequency use.
2. There are also special terms that are assigned to certain scientific disciplines, branches of production and technology; for example in linguistics: subject, predicate, adjective, pronoun; in medicine: heart attack, fibroids, periodontitis, cardiology, etc. The quintessence of each science is concentrated in these terminologies. According to S. Bally, such terms “are ideal types of linguistic expression to which scientific language inevitably strives.”

Terminological vocabulary is informative like no other. Therefore, in the language of science, terms are indispensable: they allow you to briefly and extremely accurately formulate a thought. However, the degree of terminology of scientific works is not the same. The frequency of use of terms depends on the nature of the presentation and the addressing of the text.

Modern society requires a form of description of the data obtained that would make the greatest discoveries of mankind accessible to everyone. However, often the language of monographic studies is so overloaded with terms that it becomes inaccessible even to a specialist. Therefore, it is important that the terminologies used are sufficiently mastered by science, and newly introduced terms need to be explained.

A peculiar sign of our time has been the spread of terms outside of scientific works. This gives grounds to talk about the general terminology of modern speech. Thus, many words that have a terminological meaning have become widely used without any restrictions: tractor, radio, television, oxygen. Another group consists of words that have a dual nature: they can function both as terms and as common words. In the first case, these lexical units are characterized by special shades of meaning, giving them special precision and unambiguity. Thus, the word mountain, which in broad usage means a significant elevation rising above the surrounding area and has a number of figurative meanings, does not contain specific height measurements in its interpretation.

In geographical terminology, where the distinction between the terms “mountain” and “hill” is essential, a clarification is given - a hill more than 200 m in height. Thus, the use of such words outside the scientific style is associated with their partial determinologization.

Professional vocabulary includes words and expressions used in various fields production, technology, which, however, did not become commonly used. Unlike terms - the official scientific names of special concepts, professionalisms function primarily in oral speech as “semi-official” words that do not have a strictly scientific character. Professionalisms serve to designate various production processes, production tools, raw materials, manufactured products, etc. For example, professionalisms are used in the speech of printers: ending - graphic decoration at the end of the book; tendril - ending with a thickening in the middle; tail – the bottom outer margin of the page; as well as the bottom edge of the book, opposite the head of the book.

Professionalisms can be grouped according to the area of ​​their use: in the speech of athletes, miners, doctors, hunters, fishermen, etc. A special group includes technicalisms - highly specialized names used in the field of technology.

Professionalisms, in contrast to their commonly used equivalents, serve to distinguish between closely related concepts used in a certain type of human activity. Thanks to this, professional vocabulary is indispensable for the laconic and precise expression of thoughts in special texts intended for a trained reader. However, the informative value of narrowly professional names is lost if a non-specialist encounters them. Therefore, professionalism is appropriate, say, in large-circulation trade newspapers and is not justified in publications aimed at a wide readership.

Individual professionalisms, often of a reduced stylistic sound, become part of the commonly used vocabulary: give away, storm, turnover. In fiction, professionalisms are used by writers with a specific stylistic task: as a characterological means when describing the lives of people associated with any production.

Professional slang vocabulary has a reduced expressive connotation and is used only in the oral speech of people of the same profession. For example, engineers jokingly call a self-recording device a snitch; in the speech of pilots there are the words nedomaz, peremaz, meaning undershoot and overshoot of the landing sign, as well as a bubble; sausage - balloon, etc. Professional slang words, as a rule, have neutral synonyms devoid of colloquial connotations that have a precise terminological meaning.

Professional slang vocabulary is not listed in special dictionaries, unlike professionalisms, which are given with explanations and are often enclosed in quotation marks (to distinguish them graphically from terms): “clogged” font - a font that has been in typed galleys or strips for a long time; “foreign” font – letters of a font of a different style or size that are mistakenly included in the typed text or heading.

1 Bally S. French stylistics. M., 1961 P. 144

Slang and argot vocabulary

Jargon is a social variety of speech used by a narrow circle of native speakers, united by common interests, occupations, and position in society. In modern Russian, there are youth jargon, or slang (English, slang - words and expressions used by people of certain professions or age groups), professional jargon, and camp jargon is also used in prisons.

The most widespread in our time is youth jargon, popular among students and young people. Jargons, as a rule, have equivalents in the common language: dorm - hostel, stipuh - scholarship, spurs - cribs, tail - academic debt, rooster - excellent (grade), fishing rod - satisfactory, etc. The emergence of many jargons is associated with the desire of young people to express their attitude to a subject or phenomenon more clearly and emotionally. Hence such evaluative words: amazing, awesome, iron, cool, laugh, go crazy, get high, donkey, plow, sunbathe, etc. All of them are common only in oral speech and are often absent from dictionaries (which is why there are discrepancies in the spelling of some jargon ).

The camp jargon used by people placed in special living conditions reflected the terrible life in places of detention: zek (prisoner), shpon or shmon (search), gruel (pottage), tower (execution), informer (informer), knock (inform ) and under. This layer of Russian vocabulary is still waiting to be studied, although it is currently being archaized.

The speech of certain socially closed groups (thieves, tramps, etc.) is called argo (French argot - closed, inactive). This is a secret, artificial language of the criminal world (thieves' music), known only to initiates and also existing only in oral form. Certain argotisms are becoming widespread outside the argot: blatnoy, mokrushnik, pero (knife), raspberry (stash), split, nixer, fraer, etc., but at the same time they practically pass into the category of colloquial vocabulary and are given in dictionaries with the corresponding stylistic marks: “colloquial”, “coarsely colloquial”.

Insufficient knowledge of jargon and argotisms, as well as their mobility in the language - migration from one lexical group to another - is also reflected in the inconsistency of their interpretation by dictionary compilers. Thus, in the “Dictionary of the Russian Language” by S.I. Ozhegov, the word “fall asleep” in the meaning of “to fail” is colloquial, and in the meaning of “to get caught, to be caught in something” is colloquial. In the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language”, edited by D. N. Ushakov, it is marked “colloquial”, “from the argot of thieves”. In addition, S.I. Ozhegov gives labels for most jargons that do not indicate their genetic roots: cramming - memorizing is pointless (colloquial); ancestors - parents (colloquial, humorous); freshman - a young, inexperienced sailor (colloquial, humorous).

Jargonisms and, even more so, argotisms are distinguished by their vulgar coloring. However, their lexical inferiority is explained not only by stylistic decline, but also by blurred, inaccurate meaning. The semantic structure of most slang words varies depending on the context. For example, the verb “kemarit” can mean “rest”, “doze”, “sleep”; The adjective iron has the meaning of “reliable”, “valuable”, “wonderful”, “faithful”, etc. Therefore, the use of jargon makes speech not only rude and obscene, but also careless and unclear.

The emergence and spread of jargon and argotisms is rightly assessed as a negative phenomenon in the development of the national language. Therefore, the language policy is to refuse to use them. However, writers and publicists have the right to turn to these layers of vocabulary in search of realistic colors when describing the relevant aspects of our reality. At the same time, jargon and argotisms should be introduced into literary speech only by quotation, just like dialectisms.

Self-test questions

1. What is the difference between commonly used vocabulary and vocabulary that has a limited scope of use?
2. What is the definition of dialectism?
3. What types of dialectisms are distinguished in the lexical system of the Russian language?
4. What is the use of dialectisms as a stylistic device?
5. What words belong to terminological vocabulary?
6. What words belong to professional vocabulary?
7. How do terms differ from professionalisms?
8. What is jargon?
9. What is argotism?
10. What is the lexical inferiority of jargon in comparison with words belonging to the national vocabulary?

Exercises

32. In an excerpt from D. V. Grigorovich’s story “Anton the Miserable,” highlight the dialecticisms. Determine their types, select commonly used synonyms for them. Explain the writer’s motives for turning to dialectisms.

- How not to be! “Anything can happen, my brother,” the Yaroslavl resident began again, “don’t be angry... Well, approximately,” he added after a silence, “in our neighborhood, about five versts or so, and that one will no longer be, there lived a free man, and His guy, his son, was such and such a noble, meek, hard-working guy, what can I say, a guy for everything and anything! They painted the roofs and houses, and that’s what they added to it; and in winter or autumn they walked through the swamps, shot all kinds of game and hares: all around them there were all these swamps, and, and, and! passion of the Lord! I can't walk on foot! what swamps! OK then; and I say, the peasants were rich, or, like, what naked people... The old man, where, they say, was good at knowing the places where the game was found; where it used to go, grab it with your hands...

33. Highlight dialectisms, professionalisms, and colloquial words in the text. For references, consult dictionaries.

Philip filled the lingonberries with water, plugged them with a clump of cut grass, and tied one of them, hanging it over his shoulder blade, himself, and gave the other to Karev.

The scythes clanked, and the mowers split into half-howls.

“Our second half-howl,” yesterday’s old man approached Philip. - We're trying to figure out who's on the edge.

Philip grabbed the sill and began to move with their hands.

“My end,” said the old man, “is over.”

“Well, my okol,” Philip said, “make it most convenient.”<...>

“Walk after him along someone else’s ford,” he pointed to Karev at the old man, “measure and raise your scythe.”

Karev wandered off, and his boots were smeared with tar: grass and dew stuck to them.

“And if you wander,” the old man explained, “keep straight and follow the flowers, it’s better not to go into your own and not to touch someone else’s.”

They walked along someone else's path and began to measure. Karev took a look at the meadow he and the old man had already shared with his scythe and measured out seven for himself and three for the old man, then he stood on the grout and, hanging his cap on the butt of the scythe, lifted it.

In the dew, a wide-stitched trail could be seen.

(S. A. Yesenin.)

34. In excerpts from M. Sholokhov’s novel “Virgin Soil Upturned,” highlight dialecticisms. Explain why the author replaced some words (they are given in parentheses) when reprinting the novel.

1. Smart people (isho) at the front suggested that he returned as a Bolshevik. 2. We should (after) after lunch (come) come. 3. Nikita Khoprov “helped” Lapshinova: he plowed for nothing, (dragged) harrowed, shoved Lapshinov’s wheat into the thresher while standing (with his teeth) as a feeder. 4. He will be there again this year. 5. From the base I went in new trousers with stripes, in boots (with ripples) that squeaked. 6. I began to listen to agronomists. 7. Fedotka... (chuckling) jumped on one leg and shouted. 8. The grass grew wildly, the birds and animals froze.

35. Highlight professionalisms, jargon, and colloquial words in the text. Choose commonly used synonyms for them. For help, consult explanatory dictionaries.

If you are called on duty, it means expect trouble. Either a punishment cell follows, or some other dirty trick. There can be only one exception: you go on a date while on duty. But this is always known in advance. I was called to duty unexpectedly. I went there without any enthusiasm and, of course, my misgivings were justified. True, this time they didn’t put me in a punishment cell or even “deprive me of a stall.” “Deprive with a stall” or “deprive with a date” are bossy formulas that arose as a result of a tendency to laconicism, this is 50% of the economy of expression. “Deprive the right to use a kiosk” or “...date.” The bosses, completely tormented by the desire for the ideal, had to resort quite often to the saving tongue twister, and they naturally tried to save seconds. So, something unusual awaited me. Upon entering, I saw several guards and at their head - “Regime”. We, too, were inclined to brevity, though for other reasons: when danger was approaching, it was easier and more profitable to whisper: “Regime!” than to say: “Deputy head of the camp for the regime.”

Besides the “Regime”, the guards and me, there was someone else in the room, and I immediately stared at him.

(Y. Daniel.)

36. Highlight jargon and professional slang words in the text. For help, consult explanatory dictionaries.

The phone rang. Mishka picked up the phone. Sparrow moved his chair closer to listen to what they were saying.

The conversation was empty: the mother asked Mishka to go to the dacha and dig up a garden. The bear mumbled, and Sparrow listened attentively, even putting his hand to his ear. He shook his head dissatisfied.

“It’s a bad thing you’re talking to your mom.” If you die, you will regret it.

- Yes, she is still young.

- She will die someday anyway... Is her birthday coming soon?

- In August.

– Give her a gold watch and a cake with a figure.

- Yes, she has a watch.

Sparrow waved his hand.

– You don’t understand!.. Why are you smiling? Don't laugh, I'm telling you for sure. Do you think anyone needs it except your mother? You will see. You will still remember my words.<...>

Sparrow shook the debris off the stool, wiped his palms on his robe and sat down at the table. I took a dried stencil from the stove. Using a sharpened handle, I divided the brushes into three stripes. Then he pecked the brush into a jar of paint, squeezed out the excess on the edge and straightened the hairs.

I started writing, as always, from the middle - for symmetry. The letters fit well on a dry, warm stencil from the boiler. They turned out to be wide and spreading.

Usually there were no stencils in the warehouse, and driving a car to the office to get them was a whole story. We got by.

They collected old stencils from the garbage, or at worst, they pulled them from ownerless people.

The dried stencils of Sparrow and Bear were boldly painted with dull silver and again laid to dry - this time on the cauldron. After a day or two, the stencil went into production.

According to the sphere of use, the vocabulary of the modern Russian language is divided into two main groups: 1) national, commonly used vocabulary; 2) vocabulary that has a limited scope of use: dialect vocabulary (dialectisms); professional vocabulary (professionalism); slang and argotic vocabulary (jargonisms and argotisms).

Popular vocabulary forms the basis of the Russian language.

Literary language– the highest form of the national language. Literary language serves various spheres of human activity: politics, science, culture, verbal art, education, legislation, official business communication, informal communication of native speakers (everyday communication), interethnic communication, means mass media. The main features of a literary language: processing, stability, obligatory for all native speakers, normalization, the presence of functional styles.

Beyond the literary language there are social and territorial dialects And vernacular.

Dialect(from the Greek dialektos - “conversation, dialect, dialect”) - a type of language that is a means of communication for a collective united territorially and socially.

There are dialects territorial And social.

Territorial dialects, along with the literary language, are the main variety of language; these are words and expressions used by residents of a particular area: basque (“beautiful”), bike (“fairy tale”), vedro (“fine weather”). Unlike literary language, dialect limited in distribution and use geographically and functionally, exists only in orally.

In territorial dialects, structural differences cover all levels of the language system: they are present not only in vocabulary, but also in phonetics and grammar. So, in Northern Russian dialects there is complete confusion: [ etc. O va, n O goy, you b O R]; Southern Russian dialects are characterized by pronoun forms like: I have e, from you e, for you e, to t A be, oh s A be; differences in vocabulary: in the Northern Russian dialect grip, skvorodnik, izim, winter(rye shoots), in the South Russian dialect dezha, chaplya, heron, stag, greenery.

Social dialect- a means of communication between a team united professionally or socially. Social dialects are divided into professional jargons, proper social jargons, general jargon and argot.

Jargon(French jargon) is a social type of speech characterized by specific vocabulary and phraseology.

Jargon is an accessory relatively open social and professional groups of people united by common interests, habits, activities, and social status. For example, the jargon of sailors, pilots, athletes, students, actors, etc.

Actually social jargon- jargon of individual social groups, united by such characteristics as occupation, hobbies, passions, age, etc. (youth, jargon of drug addicts, etc.).

Professional jargons– words and expressions that are traditionally used to designate a particular object or phenomenon in a certain professional environment (potters, hunters, teachers, students, etc.): zanzubel, medvedka, nastrug, jointer, sherhebel– names of tools in the speech of joiners and carpenters; basement, hat- in the speech of newspaper journalists.

Common jargon- that layer of modern Russian jargon, which, although not belonging to individual social groups, is found with a fairly high frequency in the language of the media and is used or, at least, understood by all residents big city, in particular by educated speakers of the Russian literary language ( cool, spin, drugs, pop, fun).

Unlike territorial dialects, social differentiated mainly in the field of vocabulary, semantics, phraseology: shank, blockage, teacher, stipuh(student slang); grandfathers, starley, new guy, spirits, demobilization(army jargon)

Argo(French argot) is a social type of speech characterized by highly professional vocabulary, often with elements of convention, artificiality and secrecy, as well as borrowings from other languages. Argo is an accessory relatively closed social groups and communities. The main function is to be a means separation. Argo is the speech of the lower classes of society, declassed groups and the criminal world. Argo words and expressions used in general speech are called argotisms:for free, you're in charge of the market, little guy- prison vocabulary.

On the border of argot and jargon is slang (the function of hiding information).

Slang– a type of youth slang based on borrowings from their English language (face about the table).

Unlike argot, with its elements of secrecy, the function of a “password,” jargon in its design is generally based on the general literary language, being, as it were, a social dialect of a certain age community of people or a “professional” corporation.

Slang words and expressions are called jargon.

Vernacular- a socially conditioned variety of the national Russian language, in which means are implemented that are outside the literary norm. From territorial dialects colloquial speech differs in the absence of a clear local consolidation of its features, from jargons in that these features are not recognized by its speakers as non-normative.

The vernacular is found on all language levels.

In phonetics, vernacular phenomena include stress shifts: kilometer, driver, talking, talking, calling; vowel contraction: policeman, exploit; increasing sounds: stram, like, good, problem; reduction of syllables: instrument: evacuate; fade [j]: retuse; changes in consonant groups: live, rub, suprise.

In the field of morphology, these are changes in the gender of nouns: shoes, mouse, sandal, callus– masculine gender; with jam, under the piano – feminine; changes in declension forms: business, with people, on the beach, no time; formation of some plural forms: driver, hair, glass; Declension of indeclinable forms: without a coat, polt, in curlers, ivasey; And Changes in the formation of comparative and superlative forms: wider, more beautiful, worse, most often; n non-normative phenomena in the inflection of pronouns and verbs: she has it, she wants it, takes care of it, drives it, builds it, go, lie down, drink it, broken.

In area syntax– deviations from normative verbal control: to be interested in politics, I don’t need anything; m Numerous constructions not typical of the Russian literary language: I haven't washed for two weeks. Let the younger ones have a go.

Source and vernacular - local dialects, outdated norm, mixture of different linguistic units.

Vocabulary of modern Russian language

From the point of view of active and passive stock.

Changes in the life of society (political, social, economic, cultural) are reflected in its vocabulary: the emergence of new things in life leads to the emergence of new words. The reverse process is also observed in the language - the withering away, the disappearance of some words, which is also a reflection of changes in the life of society. In progress historical development language, semantic transformations of the word occur: the emergence of new meanings for the word and the loss of old ones.

Thus, two layers of words coexist in a language: words that are constantly used and actively function in different spheres of human activity, and words that are not widely used. The first group of words is active stock Russian vocabulary, second – passive stock.

The active vocabulary includes nationwide, commonly used words that do not have any hint of obsolescence or novelty.

In the passive vocabulary, obsolete words are distinguished, i.e. those that have fallen out of use or are falling out of use, and new words, i.e. words that have not yet become commonly used, retaining a connotation of novelty.

Outdated words

Depending on the reasons why a particular word is classified as obsolete, historicisms and archaisms are distinguished.

Historicisms- these are words that have fallen out of use for extra-linguistic reasons, because the objects and phenomena that they denoted have disappeared from life. Historicisms - the only designation of the disappeared concept - have no synonyms. These are the names of ancient clothes: zipun, camisole, kokoshnik, shushpan, caftan; names of monetary units: altyn, penny, quarter; title names: boyar; names of officials: policeman, clerk, constable; weapon names: squeaker, sixtail; administrative names: parish, district etc.

Archaisms- these are words that are outdated for intralingual reasons, denoting concepts, objects, phenomena that currently exist, but for various reasons have been crowded out of active use by other words. Consequently, archaisms have synonyms in modern Russian: sail - sail, psyche - soul, overseas - foreign, this - this, because - because.

The obsolescence of words is not related to their origin. Original Russian words may become obsolete: so that, outcast, lzya; Old Slavonic: smooth, united, great, child; borrowed words: nature("nature"), satisfaction("satisfaction"), fortification("fortress").

In works fiction Historicisms and archaisms help to recreate the flavor of the era, and are also a means of speech characterization of characters.

New words

The vocabulary of the Russian language is constantly updated with new words. New words ( neologisms) appear in language to designate some new concept or phenomenon. A word is a neologism, as a rule, for a very short time; being in demand, it quickly enters the active stock: gamer, casting, shopping, transfer etc.

It is necessary to distinguish from linguistic neologisms neologisms are contextual, or individually authored (occasionalisms) – These are words that are formed by word artists and publicists in order to enhance the expressiveness of the text: bullshit(M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), sports copper forehead(M. Tsvetaeva), hammered, sickled(V. Mayakovsky).

Practical lessons.

TO common vocabulary These include words used (understood and used) in different linguistic spheres by native speakers, regardless of their place of residence, profession, lifestyle: these are the majority of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs ( blue, fire, grumble, good), numerals, pronouns, most function words.

TO vocabulary of limited use These include words whose use is limited to a certain locality (dialectisms), profession (special vocabulary), occupation or interest (slang vocabulary).

Dialectisms - These are features of dialects and dialects that do not correspond to the norms of the literary language. Dialectism is a dialect inclusion in the Russian literary language. People’s speech may reflect phonetic, word-formation, and grammatical features of the dialect, but for lexicology the most important dialectisms are those associated with the functioning of words as lexical units - lexical dialectisms, which come in several types Vvedenskaya L.A., Pavlova L.G., Culture and the art of speech. Modern rhetoric. Rostov-on-Don. 2001. P. 33..

Firstly, dialectism can denote realities that exist only in a given area and do not have names in the literary language: tyes- “a vessel for liquid made of birch bark”, crumbs- “a wooden shoulder device for carrying heavy loads.”

Secondly, dialectisms include words that are used in a certain area, but have words with the same meaning in the literary language: hefty - very, pitching - duck, basque - beautiful.

Thirdly, there are dialectisms that coincide in spelling and pronunciation with the words of the literary language, but have a different meaning that does not exist in the literary language, but is characteristic of a particular dialect, for example, plow -"sweep the floor" firefighter -"fire victim" thin in the meaning of “bad” (this meaning was also inherent in the literary language in the past, hence the comparative degree worse from adjective bad) or weather- “bad weather.”

Special vocabulary associated with people's professional activities. It includes terms and professionalisms.

Terms- these are the names of special concepts of science, art, technology, agriculture, etc. The terms are often artificially created using Latin and Greek roots and differ from “ordinary” words of the language in that they are, ideally, unambiguous in this terminology and do not have synonyms , that is, each term must correspond to only one object of a given science. Each word term has a strict definition, recorded in special scientific studies or terminological dictionaries.

There are terms that are generally understood and highly specialized. Meaning generally understood terms are known to a non-specialist, which is usually associated with studying the fundamentals of various sciences at school and with their frequent use in everyday life (for example, medical terminology) and in the media (political, economic terminology). Highly specialized terms are understandable only to specialists. Let us give examples of linguistic terms of different types Zemsky A.M. Russian language. M., 1994. P. 37.:

· generally understood terms: subject, predicate, suffix, verb;

· highly specialized terms: predicate, phoneme, submorph, suppletivisism.

Terms belong to the literary language and are recorded in special terminological dictionaries and explanatory dictionaries with the mark special.

It is necessary to distinguish from terms professionalism- words and expressions that are not scientifically defined, strictly legalized names of certain objects, actions, processes related to the professional, scientific, and production activities of people. These are semi-official and informal (they are sometimes called professional jargon) words used by people of a certain profession to designate special objects, concepts, actions, often having names in literary language. Professional jargons exist exclusively in the oral speech of people of a given profession and are not included in the literary language (for example, among printing workers: a cap- “large headline”, slur- “marriage in the form of a square”; for drivers: steering wheel- "steering wheel", brick- sign prohibiting passage). If professionalisms are included in dictionaries, they are accompanied by an indication of the scope of use ( in the speech of sailors, in the speech of fishermen etc.).

Vocabulary of restricted use also includes jargon- words used by people of certain interests, activities, habits. So, for example, there are jargons of schoolchildren, students, soldiers, athletes, criminals, hippies, etc. For example, in student jargon tail- “failed exam, test”, dorm- "dormitory", spur, bomb- “varieties of cribs”, in the jargon of schoolchildren laces, ancestors, rodaki- parents, cupcake, baby doll, bump, pepper, person, dude, cartilage, shnyaga- boy. Words included in different jargons form interjargon ( schmuck, funny, cool, party) Zemsky A.M. Russian language. M., 1994. P. 39..

In addition to the term jargon, there are also the terms “argot” and “slang”. Argo- This is a specially classified language. In previous centuries in Russia there was a slang of itinerant traders - peddlers, professional fundraisers, etc. Now we can talk about thieves' slang ( feather- knife, a gun- gun). Slang- this is different from the norm of literary language language environment oral communication that brings together a large group of people. A significant difference between slang and jargon is the increased emotionality of slang and the lack of selectivity of objects for naming using special words: slang is used in almost all speech situations during informal oral communication between people. So, we can talk about youth slang - a means of informal communication among young people aged approximately 12 to 30 years. Slang is updated quite quickly, and the sources of constant updating of slang are units of jargon (over the past few years, youth slang has switched from thieves' jargon as the main "supplier" of vocabulary to the jargon of drug addicts),

Words related to vocabulary of limited use are often used in fiction to characterize characters in speech and create a certain flavor.

Outdated words are opposed neologisms - new words, the novelty of which is felt by the speakers.

Linguistic neologisms- these are words that appear as names for new objects, phenomena, concepts that do not yet have names in the language, or as new names for already existing objects or concepts.

Linguistic neologisms arise in the following ways:

1) a new word, a new lexical unit appears in the language. It appears through borrowing ( shop tour, charter, shaping, image) or the emergence of a new word according to the word-formation models existing in the language from the “old” word ( geography lunography) or neologism-borrowing ( marketing marketing, computer computer, geek, computerization) Beloshapkova V.A. Modern Russian language. M., 1998. P. 29;

2) a word already existing in the language acquires a new meaning, for example, kettle- “a non-specialist with weak skills in something”, hatch- “text correction paste”, round- “negotiation phase”, pirate- “unlicensed”, shell- "garage". In the future, this meaning can break away and form a new homonym word.

If an object, concept, phenomenon, called a neologism, quickly becomes irrelevant, the neologism may not have time to become a commonly used word, master the language, and this word may immediately go into the passive vocabulary, becoming historicism. This fate befell many neologisms during the NEP and the first years of perestroika ( cooperator, gekachepist, voucher).

Language neologisms are used by native speakers in their everyday speech and are known and understood by many. If the existence of a linguistic neologism is justified, pretty soon the neologism enters the active vocabulary and ceases to be recognized as a new word. However, the creation of new words and word creation is also possible in other situations: a literary word, a situation of friendly communication, the speech of a child who has not yet fully mastered the vocabulary of the Russian language. An adult, a poet, a writer consciously resorts to word creation in order to make his speech more expressive or to play with the rich word-forming capabilities of the language, a child does this unconsciously. The results of such word creation are called individual (contextual, author's) neologisms. So, we find in A.S. Pushkin the words ogoncharovanov, kuchelbeckerno, from V.V. Mayakovsky: darling, walk in a hurry, turn blue, lighten.

The content of the article

SOCIOLINGUISTICS, a branch of linguistics that studies language in connection with the social conditions of its existence. By social conditions we mean a set of external circumstances in which a language actually functions and develops: the society of people using a given language, the social structure of this society, differences between native speakers in age, social status, level of culture and education, place of residence, as well as differences in their speech behavior depending on the communication situation. To understand the specifics of the sociolinguistic approach to language and the difference between this scientific discipline from “pure” linguistics, it is necessary to consider the origins of sociolinguistics and determine its status among other linguistic disciplines, its object, the basic concepts that it uses, the most typical problems that are within its competence, methods research and formed by the end of the 20th century. areas of sociolinguistics.

Origins of sociolinguistics.

The fact that language is far from uniform in social terms has been known for quite some time. One of the first written observations indicating this dates back to the beginning of the 17th century. Gonzalo de Correas, a teacher at the University of Salamanca in Spain, clearly distinguished between the social varieties of the language: “It should be noted that the language has, in addition to the dialects found in the provinces, some varieties related to the age, position and property of the inhabitants of these provinces: there is the language of the rural inhabitants, commoners, townspeople, nobles and courtiers, a scientist-historian, an elder, a preacher, women, men and even small children.”

The term “sociolinguistics” was first used in 1952 by the American sociologist Herman Curry. However, this does not mean that the science of the social conditioning of language originated in the early 1950s. The roots of sociolinguistics are deeper, and they need to be looked for not in American scientific soil, but in European and, in particular, Russian.

Linguistic research, taking into account the dependence of linguistic phenomena on social phenomena, was carried out with greater or less intensity at the beginning this century in France, Russia, Czech Republic. Scientific traditions different from those in the USA determined the situation in which the study of the connections of language with social institutions and with the evolution of society was never fundamentally separated in these countries from “pure” linguistics. “Since language is possible only in human society,” wrote I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, “then, in addition to the mental side, we must always note the social side in it. Linguistics should be based not only on individual psychology, but also on sociology.”

The most important ideas for modern sociolinguistics belong to such outstanding scientists of the first half of the 20th century as I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, E.D. Polivanov, L.P. Yakubinsky, V.M. Zhirmunsky, B.A. Larin, A. M. Selishchev, V. V. Vinogradov, G. O. Vinokur in Russia, F. Bruno, A. Meilleux, P. Lafargue, M. Cohen in France, S. Bally and A. Sechet in Switzerland, J. Vandries in Belgium, B. Gavranek, A. Mathesius in Czechoslovakia, etc. This, for example, is the idea that all means of language are distributed among spheres of communication, and the division of communication into spheres is largely socially conditioned (S. Bally); the idea of ​​social differentiation of a single national language depending on the social status of its speakers (works of Russian and Czech linguists); the position according to which the pace of linguistic evolution depends on the pace of development of society, and in general, language always lags behind social changes in the changes taking place in it (E.D. Polivanov); dissemination of ideas and methods used in the study of rural dialects to the study of the city language (B.A. Larin); justification of the need for social dialectology along with territorial dialectology (E.D. Polivanov); the importance of studying jargons, argot and other uncodified areas of language for understanding the internal structure of the national language system (B.A. Larin, V.M. Zhirmunsky, D.S. Likhachev), etc.

A characteristic feature of sociolinguistics in the second half of the 20th century is the transition from general work to experimental testing of put forward hypotheses and a mathematically verified description of specific facts. According to one of the representatives of American sociolinguistics, J. Fishman, the study of language from a social perspective at the present stage is characterized by such features as systematicity, a strict focus on data collection, quantitative and statistical analysis of facts, and a close interweaving of the linguistic and sociological aspects of the study.

The status of sociolinguistics as a scientific discipline.

Sociolinguistics - it is clear that it arose at the intersection of two other sciences - sociology and linguistics. The interdisciplinary nature of sociolinguistics is recognized by many scientists. However, this recognition in itself does not answer the question: what is more in this science - sociology or linguistics? Who deals with it – professional sociologists or professional linguists (remember that the first scientist to use the term “sociolinguistics” was a sociologist)?

Modern sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics. While this science was just taking shape and getting on its feet, one could argue about its status. But by the end of the 20th century, when in sociolinguistics not only the object, goals and objectives of research were defined, but also tangible results were obtained, the “linguistic” nature of this science became completely obvious. Another thing is that sociolinguists borrowed many methods from sociologists, for example, methods of mass surveys, questionnaires, oral surveys and interviews. But, borrowing these methods from sociologists, sociolinguists use them in relation to the tasks of language learning, and in addition, on their basis they develop their own methodological techniques for working with linguistic facts and with native speakers.

Object of sociolinguistics.

One of the founders of modern sociolinguistics, American researcher William Labov defines sociolinguistics as a science that studies “language in its social context.” If we decipher this lapidary definition, then it must be said that the attention of sociolinguists is drawn not to the language itself, not to its internal structure, but to how the people who make up this or that society use the language. In this case, all factors that can influence the use of language are taken into account - from various characteristics of the speakers themselves (their age, gender, level of education and culture, type of profession, etc.) to the characteristics of a specific speech act.

"Careful and precise scientific description a certain language, noted R. Jacobson, cannot do without grammatical and lexical rules relating to the presence or absence of differences between interlocutors in terms of their social status, gender or age; determining the place of such rules in the general description of language is a complex linguistic problem.”

Unlike generative linguistics, presented, for example, in the works of N. Chomsky, sociolinguistics deals not with an ideal native speaker who generates only correct statements in a given language, but with real people who in their speech can violate norms, make mistakes, and mix different language styles, etc. It is important to understand what explains all such features of the actual use of language.

Thus, with a sociolinguistic approach to language, the object of study is the functioning of language; its internal structure is taken as a given and is not subjected to special study. In societies where two, three, or many languages ​​function, a sociolinguist must examine the mechanisms of functioning of several languages ​​in their interaction in order to obtain answers to the following questions. In what areas of social life are they used? What is the relationship between them in terms of status and functions? Which language “dominates”, i.e. is the state or officially accepted as the main means of communication, and which ones are forced to content themselves with the role of family and everyday languages? How, under what conditions and in what forms does bi- and multilingualism arise?

Basic concepts of sociolinguistics.

Sociolinguistics operates with a certain set of concepts specific to it: language community, language situation, socio-communicative system, language socialization, communicative competence, language code, code switching, bilingualism (bilingualism), diglossia, language policy and a number of others. In addition, some concepts are borrowed from other branches of linguistics: language norm, speech communication, speech behavior, speech act, language contact, mixing languages, intermediary language, etc., as well as from sociology, social psychology: social structure of society, social status, social role, social factor and some others.

Let's consider some of these concepts that are most specific to sociolinguistics and important for understanding the essence of this scientific discipline.

Language community

is a collection of people united by common social, economic, political and cultural ties and engaged in Everyday life direct and indirect contacts with each other and with various types of social institutions using one language or different languages ​​common in this population.

The boundaries of the distribution of languages ​​very often do not coincide with political boundaries. The most obvious example is modern Africa, where residents of different states can speak the same language (for example, Swahili, common in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, partly in Zaire and Mozambique), and several languages ​​coexist within one state (in Nigeria, for example, has more than 200 of them!). Therefore, when defining the concept of “linguistic community”, a combination of linguistic and social characteristics is important: if we leave only linguistic ones, then we will be talking only about language, regardless of the environment in which it is used; if we rely only on social criteria (including political-economic and cultural factors), then the languages ​​functioning in a given social community will remain outside the field of attention.

A linguistic community can be considered as a collection of people, varying in the number of individuals included in them - from an entire country to the so-called small social groups (for example, a family, a sports team): the criterion for identification in each case should be the commonality of social life and the presence of regular communicative contacts. One language community can be inclusive of others. So, modern Russia- an example of a language community that includes language communities of a smaller scale: republics, regions, cities. In turn, the city as a linguistic community includes linguistic communities of an even smaller scale: enterprises, institutions, educational institutions.

The smaller the size of a language community, the higher its linguistic homogeneity. In Russia, dozens of national languages ​​and their dialects exist and interact with each other, and in large Russian cities basic forms public life are carried out in a significantly smaller number of languages, often in two (Kazan: Tatar and Russian, Ufa: Bashkir and Russian, Maykop: Adyghe and Russian), and with national homogeneity of the population - mainly in one (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk).

Within such linguistic communities as a factory, a research institute, or a high school, one language of communication predominates. However, in small linguistic communities, such as a family, where communicative contacts are carried out directly, there may be not one, but two languages ​​(and even more: families of Russian emigrants are known to use family communication several languages).

Language code.

Each linguistic community uses certain means of communication - languages, their dialects, jargons, stylistic varieties of language. Any such means of communication can be called a code. In the most general sense, a code is a means of communication: a natural language (Russian, English, Somali, etc.), an artificial language such as Esperanto or the type of modern machine languages, Morse code, maritime flag signaling, etc. In linguistics, a code is usually used to refer to linguistic entities: a language, a territorial or social dialect, an urban Koine, etc.

Along with the term “code” the term “subcode” is used. It denotes a variety, a subsystem of a certain general code, a communication tool of a smaller volume, a narrower scope of use and a smaller set of functions than a code. For example, such varieties of the modern Russian national language as the literary language, territorial dialect, urban vernacular, social jargon are subcodes, or subsystems of a single code (Russian national language).

A subcode or subsystem can also be divided into varieties and thereby include subcodes (subsystems) of a lower level, etc. For example, the Russian literary language, which itself is a subcode in relation to the national language, is divided into two varieties - codified language and colloquial language, each of which has a certain self-sufficiency and differs in functions: codified language is used in book and written forms of speech, and colloquial - in oral, everyday and everyday forms. In turn, the codified literary language is differentiated into styles, and styles are realized in a variety of speech genres; There is some semblance of such differentiation in spoken language.

Social-communicative system

– this is a set of codes and subcodes used in a given language community and in a relationship of functional complementarity with each other. “Functional complementarity” means that each of the codes and subcodes that form the socio-communicative system has its own functions without intersecting with the functions of other codes and subcodes (thus they all seem to complement each other in function).

For example, each style of literary language - scientific, official business, journalistic, religious preaching - has its own specific functions that are not characteristic of other styles, and together they functionally complement each other, forming a system capable of serving all the communicative needs of a given society (which can be conditionally called a society of speakers of a literary language; besides them there are also, for example, speakers of dialects, vernacular) and all spheres of communication.

In a multilingual society, the socio-communicative system is formed by different languages, and communicative functions are distributed between them (each of the languages ​​can, naturally, be divided into subcodes - dialects, jargons, styles).

Language situation.

The components of the socio-communicative system serving a particular linguistic community are in certain relationships with each other. At each stage of the existence of a linguistic community, these relations are more or less stable. However, this does not mean that they cannot change. Changes in the political situation in the country, a change in the state system, economic transformations, new guidelines in social and national policies, etc. - all this can in one way or another affect the state of the socio-communicative system, its composition and the functions of its components - codes and subcodes.

The functional relationships between the components of the socio-communicative system at one or another stage of the existence of a given linguistic community form the linguistic situation characteristic of this community.

The concept of “language situation” is usually applied to large linguistic communities - countries, regions, republics. For this concept, the time factor is important: essentially, the language situation is the state of the socio-communicative system at a certain period of its functioning.

For example, in Ukraine, where the socio-communicative system includes Ukrainian and Russian languages ​​as the main components (besides them there are others: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech and some others), before the collapse of the USSR there was a relative dynamic balance between these languages. There were schools with both Ukrainian and Russian languages ​​of instruction, in the field of science and higher education both languages ​​were in circulation, to a certain extent dividing the spheres of application (natural and Technical science– mainly in Russian, humanitarian – mainly in Ukrainian), in the everyday sphere the choice of language of communication was determined by the intentions of the speaker, the type of addressee, the nature of the communication situation, etc. In the 1990s, the functions of the Russian language in Ukraine sharply narrowed; it was replaced by the Ukrainian language from the spheres of secondary and higher education, science, and culture; The areas of use of the Russian language in everyday communication are also declining.

These changes are undoubted evidence of a change in the language situation, while the composition of the socio-communicative system serving the Ukrainian language society remains the same.

Switching codes.

Codes (languages) and subcodes (dialects, styles) that make up the socio-communicative system are functionally distributed. This means that the same contingent of speakers who make up a given linguistic society, owning a common set of communicative means, uses them depending on the conditions of communication. For example, if we are talking about subcodes of a literary language, then in scientific activity native speakers of a literary language use scientific style of speech in the field of office work, jurisprudence, administrative correspondence, etc. they are also obliged to resort to means of an official business style in the field of religious cult- to words and constructions of the religious-preaching style, etc.

In other words, depending on the sphere of communication, the speaker switches from one language means to another.

A similar picture is observed in those societies where not one, but two languages ​​(or several) are used. Bilinguals, i.e. people who speak two (or several) languages ​​usually “distribute” their use depending on the conditions of communication: in an official setting, when communicating with authorities, one language is used predominantly, and in everyday life, in the family, when contacting with neighbors, another language is used (others) ). And in this case, we can talk about switching from one code to another, only the codes are not the styles of one language, as in the first example, but different languages.

Switching codes, or code switching, is the speaker's transition in the process verbal communication from one language (dialect, style) to another depending on the communication conditions. Code switching can be caused, for example, by a change of addressee, i.e. the one to whom the speaker is addressing. If the addressee speaks only one of the two languages ​​that the speaker knows, then the latter, naturally, has to use exactly this language, familiar to the addressee, although up to this point another language or both languages ​​could have been used in communicating with bilingual interlocutors. Switching to a language code known to the interlocutor can occur even if the composition of those communicating changes: if a third person joins a conversation between two bilinguals and speaks only one of the languages ​​known to all three, then the communication should take place in this language. The refusal of the interlocutors to switch to a code familiar to the third participant in the communication can be regarded as a reluctance to devote him to the topic of conversation or as neglect of his communicative requests.

A factor causing code switching may be a change in the role of the speaker himself. For example, in the role of a father (when communicating in the family) or in the role of a housemate, he can use his native dialect, but when turning to the central authorities, he is forced to switch to more or less generally accepted forms of speech. If such a switch does not occur, government officials will not understand him and he will not achieve his goal (satisfy a request, consider a complaint, etc.), i.e. will suffer a communication failure.

The topic of communication also influences the choice of code. According to researchers who dealt with the problems of communication in conditions of linguistic heterogeneity, members of linguistic communities prefer to discuss “productive” topics in a language that has the appropriate special terminology to denote different technical processes, devices, instruments, etc. But as soon as the topic changes – from industrial to everyday – another language code or subcode “turns on”: the native language or dialect of the interlocutors. In a monolingual society, with such a code change, a switch occurs from a professional language to commonly used language means.

At what points in the speech chain do speakers code-switch? This depends on the nature of the influence of those factors that were just discussed. If the speaker can foresee the influence of one or another factor and even in some sense plan, then the switch occurs at the natural boundaries of the speech flow: at the end of a phrase, a syntactic period, in the most relaxed mode of communication - at the end of a discussion of a topic. However, if the intervention of the factor causing code switching is unexpected for the speaker, he can switch from code to code in the middle of a phrase, sometimes without even finishing the word. With a high degree of proficiency in different codes or subcodes, when their use is largely automated, the process of code switching itself may not be recognized by the speaker, especially in cases where another code (subcode) is not used entirely, but in fragments. For example, speaking one language, a person can insert into his speech elements of another language - phraseological units, modal words, interjections, particles.

The very ability to switch codes indicates a fairly high degree of proficiency in language (or language subsystems) and a certain communicative and general human culture. Code switching mechanisms ensure mutual understanding between people and relative comfort in the process of speech communication itself. On the contrary, the inability of an individual to vary his speech depending on the conditions of communication, adherence to only one code (or subcode) is perceived as an anomaly and can lead to communicative conflicts.

Language variability.

If we can switch from one language means to another in the process of communication, for example, when changing the addressee, while continuing to discuss the same topic, this means that we have at our disposal a set of means that allows us to talk about the same thing in different ways. This is an extremely important property of language, providing the speaker with the opportunity not only to freely express his thoughts in a given language, but also to do it in different ways. The ability of a native speaker to express the same meaning in different ways is called his ability to paraphrase. This ability, along with the ability to extract meaning from what is said and the ability to distinguish correct phrases from incorrect ones, underlies a complex mental skill called "language proficiency."

Variability manifests itself at all levels of speech communication - from mastery of the means of different languages ​​(and, therefore, variation, alternating use of units of each language depending on the conditions of communication) to the speaker’s awareness of the admissibility of different phonetic or accent variants belonging to the same language (in modern Russian literary in language these are variants like there was[shn ]aya / was[chn ]and I, and under.).

From a sociolinguistic point of view, the phenomenon of variability deserves attention insofar as different language varieties can be used depending on the social differences between native speakers and on differences in the conditions of speech communication.

Sociolect.

This term arose in linguistics relatively recently - in the second half of the 20th century. It is formed from two parts - the socio-part, indicating the attitude towards society, and the second component of the word “dialect”; this is essentially a condensation of the phrase “social dialect” into one word. A sociolect is a set of linguistic characteristics inherent in any social group - professional, class, age, etc. – within one or another subsystem of the national language. Examples of sociolects include the peculiarities of speech of soldiers (soldier’s jargon), schoolchildren (school jargon), criminal jargon, hippie argot, student slang (for the terms “jargon”, “argot”, “slang” see below), professional “language” of those those who work on computers, various trade argots (for example, shuttle traders, drug dealers), etc.

The term “sociolect” is convenient to designate diverse and dissimilar linguistic formations, which, however, have a common unifying feature: these formations serve the communicative needs of socially limited groups of people.

Sociolects do not represent complete communication systems. These are precisely the features of speech - in the form of words, phrases, syntactic structures, stress features, etc.; the basis of sociolects—vocabulary and grammatical—usually differs little from that characteristic of a given national language. Thus, in modern criminal argot there is quite a lot big number specific designations, including metaphorical ones: bulldozer “head”, piece "a thousand rubles", cop "policeman", haza, raspberry "den of thieves", crunches "money", roam “to search”, stage “transit prison”, etc., but the inflection and conjugation of these words, their combination into sentences are carried out according to general language models and rules; The vocabulary is also common and does not denote any specific realities of the “professional” and everyday life of criminals (cf.: They hit me on the bullshit; He bought this for two pieces; The cops descended on the khaza and ransacked everyone who was there).

Argo. Jargon. Slang.

The first two terms are French in origin (French argot, jargon), the third is English (English slang). All three terms are often used interchangeably. However, it is advisable to distinguish between the concepts hidden behind these names: argot is, in contrast to jargon, a secret language to one degree or another, created specifically to make the speech of a given social group incomprehensible to outsiders. Therefore, it is preferable to use the phrases “thieves’ slang”, “argo ofeni” - traveling merchants in Russia in the 19th century, rather than “thieves’ jargon”, “ofeni’s jargon”.

The term "slang" is more characteristic of the Western linguistic tradition. Content-wise, it is close to what is denoted by the term “jargon”.

Argo, jargon, slang are types of sociolect. The specificity of each of these linguistic entities may be due to the professional isolation of certain groups or their social isolation from the rest of society. Computer jargon (slang) is an example of professionally limited language formations, thieves' slang, student slang are examples of socially limited subcodes. Sometimes a group may be isolated both professionally and socially; the speech of such a group has the properties of both professional and social jargon. An example is soldier's jargon, since military affairs is a profession, and people engaged in this profession live their own lives, quite isolated from the rest of society.

Koine.

Term koine(Greek “common [language]”) was originally applied only to the common Greek language, which developed in the 4th–3rd centuries. BC. and served as the unified language of business, scientific and fiction literature in Greece until the 2nd–3rd centuries. AD

In modern sociolinguistics, Koine is understood as a means of everyday communication that connects people who speak different regional or social varieties of a given language. The role of Koine can be supra-dialectal forms of the language - peculiar interdialects that combine the features of different territorial dialects - or one of the languages ​​functioning in a given area.

The concept of “koine” is especially relevant for the linguistic life of large cities, where masses of people with different speech skills mix. Intergroup communication in a city requires the development of a means of communication that would be understandable to everyone. This is how urban koine appear, serving the needs of everyday, mainly oral communication of different groups of the urban population.

In addition to the urban Koine, there are the Koine of the area, i.e. a specific territory in which a given language (or languages) is spoken. Thus, in the multilingual republic of Mali (Africa), the Bamana language, which has a supra-dialectal form, is used as Koine. The concept of Koine is sometimes applied to written forms of the language, such as Latin, which was used as the language of science in medieval Europe.

Diglossia and bilingualism.

The terms described above, denoting various kinds of subsystems of the national language, indicate that natural languages are fundamentally heterogeneous: they exist in many of their varieties, the formation and functioning of which is determined by a certain social differentiation of society and the diversity of its communicative needs.

Some of these varieties have their own carriers, i.e. a collection of speakers who speak only a given subsystem of the national language (territorial dialect, vernacular). Other varieties serve not as the only, but as an additional means of communication: for example, a student uses student jargon mainly in “his” environment, when communicating with his own kind, and in other situations he resorts to means of the literary language. The same is true of professional jargon: programmers and computer operators use computer jargon in casual communication on professional themes, and going beyond the boundaries of their professional environment, they use words and constructions of the general literary language.

Such mastery of different subsystems of one national language and their use depending on the situation or sphere of communication is called intralingualdiglossia(from Greek "two-" and "language"; literally “bilingualism”).

In addition, the term "diglossia" can also mean possession different languages and their alternate use depending on the communication situation; in this case, the term is used without the definition “intralingual”.

The concept of diglossia was introduced into scientific circulation by the American researcher Charles Ferguson in 1959. Before that, the term “bilingualism” was used (and continues to be used now) in linguistics - as the Russian translation of the international term “bilingualism.” And for situations in which the functioning of several languages ​​is possible, the term “multilingualism” (English multilingualism, French plurilinguisme) is adopted.

Bilingualism and multilingualism, as follows from the literal meaning of these terms, is the presence and functioning within one society (usually a state) of two or more languages. Many modern countries are bi- or multilingual: Russia (cf. the existence on its territory, along with Russian, of languages ​​such as Bashkir, Tatar, Yakut, Buryat, Ossetian and many others), countries of Africa, Southeast Asia, India and etc.

We can also talk about bilingualism and multilingualism in relation to one person if he speaks not one, but several languages.

In contrast to bilingualism and multilingualism, diglossia refers to a form of proficiency in two independent languages ​​or subsystems of one language, in which these languages ​​and subsystems are functionally distributed: for example, in official situations - lawmaking, office work, correspondence between government agencies, etc. - the official (or state) language is used if we are talking about a multilingual society, or the literary form of the national language (in monolingual societies), and in everyday situations, in family communication - other languages ​​that do not have official or state status, other languages subsystems – dialect, vernacular, jargon.

An important condition for diglossia is the fact that speakers make a conscious choice between different communicative means and use the one that is best able to ensure the success of communication.

Scope of language use

– another term common in sociolinguistics. This term refers to the area of ​​extra-linguistic reality, characterized by the relative homogeneity of communicative needs, to satisfy which speakers make a certain selection of linguistic means and rules for their combination with each other.

As a result of such a selection of linguistic means and the rules for their combination, a more or less stable (for a given language community) tradition is formed, correlating a certain sphere of human activity with a certain language code (subcode) - an independent language or a subsystem of the national language. Thus, in medieval Europe, Latin was a communicative tool used in worship, as well as in science, while other areas of activity were served by the corresponding national languages ​​and their subsystems. In Russia, the role of a cult communicative tool for a long time belonged to the Church Slavonic language.

The distribution of languages ​​or their subsystems across areas of activity may not be rigid: one of the languages ​​or one of the subsystems may predominate in a given area, but the use of elements of other languages ​​(subsystems) is allowed. Thus, in the family communication of residents of a modern Russian village, the local dialect predominates, and they also use it in agricultural work. However, in modern conditions, a pure dialect is a rarity; it is preserved only among some representatives of the older generation of rural residents, while in the speech of the majority it is greatly “diluted” with elements of the literary language and vernacular. Modern Belarus uses the Belarusian language in the field of humanitarian education, but here you can also find elements of the closely related Russian language. In the sphere of production, despite state support for the native language, the Russian language predominates (in special terminology, in technical documentation, in professional communication among specialists), but the use of Belarusian, of course, is not prohibited.

Speech and non-speech communication.

The term “communication” has many meanings: it is used, for example, in the combination “mass communication media” (meaning the press, radio, television), in technology it is used to designate communication lines, etc. In sociolinguistics, “communication” is a synonym for “communication.” A foreign language term in this case is more convenient, since it easily forms derivatives, and they are necessary to designate different aspects of communication: “communicative situation”, “communicants” (= participants in a communicative situation) and some others.

Communication can be verbal and non-verbal (or, in other terminology, verbal and non-verbal – from the Latin verbum “word”). For example, communication between people in a number of sports games (basketball, football, volleyball) does not necessarily include a verbal component or includes it minimally - in the form of exclamations: - Pass! – I'll take it! and under. Not all physical work requires verbal communication: for example, in workshops with high level noise - stamping, forging, foundry - we have to do without words, but communication between people working in such shops still occurs (for example, with the help of gestures).

A significantly larger part of human communication occurs through speech (after all, language is intended primarily for communication). These types of communication are primarily of interest to sociolinguists. Speech communication occurs within the framework of a communicative situation .

Communication situation

- This is a situation of verbal communication between two or more people. The communicative situation has a certain structure. It consists of the following components:

1) speaker (addressee); 2) listener (addressee); 3) the relationship between the speaker and the listener and the associated 4) tone of communication (official - neutral - friendly); 5) goal; 6) means of communication (language or its subsystem - dialect, style, as well as paralinguistic means - gestures, facial expressions); 7) method of communication (oral/written, contact/distant); 8) place of communication.

These are situational variables. Changing the values ​​of each of these variables leads to a change in the communicative situation and, consequently, to a variation in the means used by the participants in the situation and their communicative behavior in general.

Thus, communication between a judge and a witness in a courtroom is distinguished by greater formality of the linguistic means used by both parties than communication between the same persons outside the court session: the place changes, but the social roles (see about this concept below), like all other situational variables, are kept constant.

A judge’s appeal to a witness in order to clarify biographical data necessarily presupposes a question-and-answer form of communication with the corresponding syntactic properties of the dialogue (ellipticity of statements, repetition of certain elements of the question by the respondent, etc.). The judge’s appeal to the witness in order to reproduce the latter’s testimony at the preliminary investigation presupposes the predominance of the judge’s monologue and only a confirming or denying reaction from the witness (the purpose of communication changes, while maintaining all other situational variables).

Coming out of my official role, the judge ceases to be in a relationship with the witness that prescribes a certain speech behavior for both of them. Let’s say, in a “transport” situation - if both are traveling on a bus - with the roles of “passenger - passenger”, their speech, of course, is less official.

If the judge and the witness know each other, then nevertheless the setting of the court session and their roles prescribe for both of them the official tone of communication; outside this environment, when “returning” to the role relationships “acquaintance - acquaintance” (and maybe “friend - friend”), the tone of communication can change to informal, even familiar, using the means of colloquial language, vernacular, and jargon.

Communication between a judge and a witness at a reception with a judge (outside a court session), when communication is contact and oral, allows for ellipted forms of speech; handwritten written testimony of a witness (distance and written form of communication) requires explicit, syntactically complete forms of expression.

Note that in reality, in real communication, situational variables interact with each other and each of them acquires certain meanings together with others: for example, if the place of communication changes, this often means at the same time a change in its purpose, as well as in the relationship between the communicants and the tone communication; Contact interaction between speaker and listener is usually associated with the use of oral-conversational forms of speech, and distance is associated with the use of written speech (cf., however, telephone communication), etc.

Speech communication, speech behavior, speech act.

All three terms are directly related to speech communication. The first is a synonym for the term “speech communication” . It is important to emphasize that both synonyms denote a two-way process, the interaction of people during communication. In contrast, the term “speech behavior” emphasizes the one-sidedness of the process: it denotes those properties and features that characterize the speech and speech reactions of one of the participants in the communicative situation - either the speaker (addresser) or the listener (addressee). The term “speech behavior” is convenient when describing monological forms of speech - for example, communicative situations of a lecture, speech at a meeting, at a rally, etc. However, it is insufficient when analyzing dialogue: in this case, it is important to reveal the mechanisms of mutual speech actions, and not just the speech behavior of each of the communicating parties. Thus, the concept of “verbal communication” includes the concept of “speech behavior”.

The term “speech act” refers to specific speech actions of the speaker within a particular communicative situation. For example, in the situation of purchasing a product on the market, a dialogue is possible between the buyer and seller, including various speech acts: a request for information ( - How much does this item cost?Who is the manufacturer?What material is it made of??), message ( - Two thousand; South Korea ;Genuine Leather), request ( – Set aside, please, I'll run for money), accusation ( - You give me change given incorrectly!), threat ( - I’ll call the police now!) and etc.

In the middle of the 20th century. The English philosopher J. Austin, and after him the American scientists J. Searle and G. Grice, developed a theory of speech acts, in which they identified a number of patterns characteristic of the process of speech communication, and formulated principles and postulates, following which ensures the success of a particular speech act. act and verbal communication in general: for example, “express yourself clearly,” “be sincere,” “be brief,” “avoid unclear expressions,” etc.

Communicative competence of a native speaker.

In the process of verbal communication, people use the means of language - its vocabulary and grammar - to construct statements that would be understandable to the addressee. However, knowing only the dictionary and grammar is not enough for communication in a given language to be successful: you also need to know the conditions for using certain linguistic units and their combinations. In other words, in addition to grammar itself, a native speaker must learn “situational grammar”, which prescribes the use of language not only in accordance with the meaning of lexical units and the rules for their combination in a sentence, but also depending on the nature of the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, on the purpose of communication and on other factors, knowledge of which, together with linguistic knowledge itself, constitutes the communicative competence of a native speaker.

The nature of communication skills that are part of communicative competence and differ from knowledge of the language itself can be illustrated by the example of so-called indirect speech acts. Indirect is a speech act whose form does not correspond to its real meaning in a given situation. For example, if a neighbor at the dinner table addresses you with in the following words: - Could you please pass me the salt??, then in form it is a question, but in essence it is a request, and the answer to it should be your action: you pass the salt shaker to your neighbor. If you understand this request as a question and answer: - Can, without performing the appropriate action and waiting until the interlocutor actually directly asks you to pass him the salt, the communication process will be disrupted: you will not act as the speaker expected and as is customary to respond to similar questions and requests in similar situations.

Sociolinguistics borrowed some terms and concepts from sociology and social psychology. The most important of them is social status and social role .

Living in society and belonging to various groups, each individual has several social positions in society. For example, a student (which in itself is a certain social position) can be an activist in a youth party, an institute chess champion, or a guitarist in a band; At home he is a son and brother, in a friendly company he is a friend, etc. Each of these positions is associated with certain rights and responsibilities and is called social status.

A person achieves most of his inherent statuses himself; such statuses are called acquired. Student status is acquired by successfully passing university entrance exams, champion status by winning a competition, and husband status by marriage. Other statuses, such as gender, ethnicity or race, we receive at birth; sociologists call them attributed statuses. We receive some assigned statuses later (the status of an older brother - upon the birth of a second son in the family, the status of an adult - upon reaching a certain age). The essence of ascribed statuses is that they are given to a person automatically, against his will and desire, and, having been received, as a rule, accompany him throughout his life. If loss of assigned status is possible, then it occurs according to certain rules and also against the will of the individual (such, for example, as the status of a person liable for military service).

Some statuses combine the properties of acquired and assigned: a person invests significant efforts in preparing and defending a dissertation, but the resulting academic degree remains for life. Another example is the status of a criminal; it is attributed by a court decision, but is acquired by the unlawful behavior of an individual. Some statuses are situational and of a short-term nature: a tram passenger, a buyer in a bakery, a person speaking at a trade union meeting or a scientific conference. The significance of most of these statuses is reinforced by their periodic renewal.

Social statuses determine the individual’s relationships with other members of society, his relatively permanent or temporary position in social hierarchies different types.

Every status implies rights, responsibilities and corresponding normative behavior. Student status means attending classes, passing exams, completing an internship, the right to use the library of your university, and much more. Teacher status - competence in the relevant discipline, certain teaching skills, research activities, attendance at department meetings, etc. From a person with one or another social status, others expect certain behavior corresponding to this status.

This set of standard, generally accepted expectations is called a social role. One status may correspond to several roles: for example, the expectations of a university teacher from students, colleagues, the head of the department, the administration and technical staff of the university are different. A set of roles “tied” to one status is called a role set.

Many roles characteristic of a given society have special designations in the language: father, wife, son, classmate, neighbor, teacher, buyer, patient, passenger, client, chairman of a meeting, etc. All adult members of society know more or less well what to expect from a person’s behavior when performing each of these roles, so even simply pronouncing the name of a role usually evokes in the minds of the speaker and listener an idea of ​​​​the complex of rights and responsibilities inherent in this role.

Role expectations do not depend on a specific person, but are formed along with the type of social system within which this role exists; however, this is only true when considering statuses and their associated roles in the abstract. A real individual, having received a certain status, begins to master the corresponding roles; Sociologists call this process role internalization (from the Latin internus “internal”).

Despite the fact that the set of expectations inherent in a particular role consists of a set of constants that prescribe certain behavior for the individual, the internalization of roles by each person occurs through the prism of his personal experience and under the influence of the micro- and macroenvironment to which he belongs. Therefore, the performance of roles, both conditioned by the constant and long-term social characteristics of the individual, and those played out in one or another standard situation, varies from individual to individual, from one social group to another. It is important, however, that this variability is within certain limits - as long as it does not contradict the expectations inherent in a given role and does not violate certain social norms.

Ideas about the typical performance of a particular social role develop into stereotypes; they form an integral part of role behavior. Stereotypes are formed on the basis of experience, frequent repetition of role characteristics that characterize behavior, manner of speaking, moving, dressing, etc. There are even stable expressions in the language that reflect our ideas about the typical speech behavior of a person in a particular social role: leave your prosecutorial tone; screams like a market woman; speaks like a teacher; in the tone of a guilty schoolboy and so on.

Learning role behavior takes place within the framework of a certain social system, through formal and informal sanctions imposed by this system; these sanctions can be positive (rewards) or negative (punishments). Thus, the social system imposes on the bearer of the new status the normative understandings accepted in it of his new role set. However, a person has a certain freedom to rework standard roles “to suit himself”, in accordance with his own interpretation of typical behavior corresponding to his newly acquired status. Conformists accept the role as it is. Others, on the contrary, having accepted the role, persistently impose their own vision of it on their partners in social interaction and often succeed in modifying the role. If the reworking of the role becomes too radical, its bearer is subject to misunderstanding and condemnation in society.

The life of an individual as a member of society begins with the development of role behavior in the primary group, the family in which he was born and raised; from here begins the process of his socialization - entry into the society in which he will live and act. Socialization is a process during which an individual consistently enters more and more new groups for himself and assimilates and internalizes all new roles. The acquisition of the language used in a given society and the rules of its use in accordance with the performance of certain social roles is part of this process and is called language socialization.

Problems of sociolinguistics.

The main goals of sociolinguistics are to study how people who make up a particular society use language, and how changes in the society in which the language exists affect the development of the language. These goals correspond to two cardinal sociolinguistic problems - the problem of social differentiation of language and the problem of social conditioning of language development .

For modern stage The development of the first of these problems is characterized by the following features:

1. Refusal of the straightforward view that was widespread in the past on the differentiation of language in connection with the social stratification of society: according to this view, the stratification of society into classes directly leads to the formation of class dialects and languages. This point of view was expressed especially clearly in the book by A.M. Ivanov and L.P. Yakubinsky Essays on language(1932), as well as in the works of L.P. Yakubinsky The language of the proletariat, The language of the peasantry and others published in the 1930s in the journal Literary Studies.

More convincing and currently shared by most linguists is the point of view according to which the relationship between the structure of society and the social structure of language is arranged in a rather complex way. The social differentiation of language reflects not only and, perhaps, not so much the current state of society, but its previous states, the characteristic features of its structure and changes in this structure in the past, at different stages of development of a given society. In this regard, it is necessary to remember the thesis, repeatedly expressed by linguists of the past, but which has not lost its relevance, that the pace of linguistic development significantly lags behind the pace of development of society, that language, by virtue of its purpose - to be a connecting link between several successive generations - much more conservative than this or that social structure.

2. With the refusal of a straightforward interpretation of the problem of social differentiation of language and the recognition of the complexity of socio-linguistic connections, another feature of the development of this problem in modern linguistics is associated: with a general tendency to identify systemic connections between language and society, sociolinguists point to the mechanistic and apriorism of this approach to the study of this problem, which declares complete isomorphism (i.e. complete correlation of properties) of the structure of the language and the structure of the society it serves.

The exaggerated and therefore incorrect idea of ​​the isomorphy of linguistic and social structures is to a certain extent explained by the absence until the mid-20th century. specific sociolinguistic research: a speculative approach prevailed in the interpretation of sociolinguistic connections. With the advent of works based on a significant amount of linguistic and social material, the instability of the theory of isomorphism became more obvious.

As these studies show, the social is quite complexly transformed in language, as a result of which the social structure of language and the structure of speech behavior of people in society are characterized by specific features that, although determined by the social nature of language, do not find direct analogues in the structure of society. These are, for example, types of variation in language means that depend on the social characteristics of the speakers and on the conditions of speech.

3. With regard to the development of the problem of social differentiation of language, modern sociolinguistics is characterized by a broader view than before on the phenomenon of variation in the means of language (which can be determined by both social and intralinguistic reasons) - including those means that belong to relatively homogeneous linguistic formations, such as, for example, a literary language.

Some researchers consider social categories such as “status” and “social role” as factors influencing the stylistic variation of language. Attention to the figure of the speaker as one of the main factors determining the variation of speech, the identification of different types of speakers depending on social and situational characteristics is characteristic of a number of modern studies in the field of stylistics. Such, for example, is the research of U. Labov, innovative for its time, in which the phonetic variability of the modern American version of the English language is considered depending on the social stratification of speakers and the stylistic conditions of speech.

Social conditioning of language evolution.

The very idea of ​​social conditioning of linguistic evolution is by no means new. It follows from the axiom according to which language is a social phenomenon, and if so, then, naturally, the development of language cannot be completely autonomous: it somehow depends on the development of society. The question is how exactly changes in social life affect changes in language, what is the mechanism of this influence.

In the works of E.D. Polivanov (1920s), the idea was first expressed that the influence of society on language does not occur directly, that changes in social life can accelerate or slow down the course of linguistic evolution, but cannot influence its character and direction (which is determined by the internal laws of language). Developing the concept of E.D. Polivanov, M.V. Panov in the 1960s proposed the theory of linguistic antinomies - constantly operating opposing tendencies, the struggle of which is the driving stimulus for language development. The most important of the antinomies are the following: the antinomy of speaker and listener, system and norm, code and text, regularity and expressiveness. At each specific stage of language development, antinomies are resolved in favor of one or the other of the opposing principles, which leads to the emergence of new contradictions, etc. - a final resolution of the antinomies is impossible: this would mean that the language has stopped in its development.

Antinomies are the most general patterns of language development. Of course, they do not cancel the action of specific social factors that form the unique context of the evolution of each language. However, they are not something separate from social factors: the close interaction of both, the “imposition” of certain social conditions on the action of each of the antinomies, constitutes the specificity of the development of language at different stages of its history.

Unlike antinomies that cover the language system as a whole, social factors are not equal in strength and range of their influence on language. They have different linguistic significance: some of them, global, act on all levels of the linguistic structure, others, private, to one degree or another determine the development of only some levels. Examples of global social factors: changing the circle of native speakers; dissemination of education; territorial movements of people (migration); the creation of a new statehood, influencing certain areas of language in a new way; development of science; major technical innovations and inventions (no one would argue, for example, that the invention of printing, radio, and the introduction of television into the everyday life of every person were social factors that influenced the areas of language use; mass computerization of many types of activities in one form or another is reflected in in the language, as well as in the speech behavior of native speakers, etc.). A change in the composition of native speakers of a language, which can be considered as a global social factor, leads to changes in phonetics, in the lexical-semantic system, in syntax and, to a lesser extent, in the morphology of the language. Thus, a change in the composition of speakers of the Russian literary language in the 1920–1930s influenced pronunciation (towards its literalization: instead of the old Moscow normative there was[shn ]and I, there[hey ]th started talking there was[chn ]and I,there[X "And ]th), on the lexical-semantic system: the borrowing of words from dialects and vernacular entailed a restructuring of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations within the dictionary; syntactic constructions, hitherto common in vernacular, dialects, and professional speech, were involved in literary circulation (such, for example, are the origin of phrases like bad with firewood, checking the water for contamination with chemical waste and under.); under the influence of uncodified language subsystems, the frequency of forms increased by -á in eminent plural case number of masculine nouns ( spotlights, and under.).

An example of a private social factor is a change in the traditions of mastering a literary language. In the 19th – early 20th centuries. In the noble-intellectual environment, the oral tradition prevailed: the language was acquired in intra-family communication, through the transfer of pronunciation and other speech patterns from the older generation to the younger. In connection with the processes of democratization of the composition of native speakers of a literary language, the form of familiarization with a literary language through a book, through a textbook, began to spread and even prevail. This factor influenced mainly the norms of pronunciation: along with traditional pronunciation patterns, new words that were closer to the orthographic appearance began to spread (see examples above).

Sociolinguistics also studies problems related to the social aspect of language proficiency, social regulation of speech behavior, with a complex set of issues related to the mixing of languages ​​and the formation as a result of this process of “intermediate” language idioms - pidgins and creoles. Problems of bilingualism and the processes of interaction and mutual influence of languages, caused by the presence of two or more languages ​​in one society, are also the sphere of competence of sociolinguistics. Finally, sociolinguistics is called upon to take part in resolving issues of language policy and language planning - for example, in multilingual regions, in situations of choosing one of the languages ​​as the state language, in the development of alphabets and scripts for unwritten languages, etc.

Methods of sociolinguistics.

Methods specific to sociolinguistics as a linguistic discipline can be divided into methods for collecting material, methods for processing it, and methods for assessing the reliability of the data obtained and their meaningful interpretation.

In the first group, methods borrowed from sociology, social psychology and partly from dialectology predominate; in the second and third, methods of mathematical statistics occupy a significant place. There is also specificity in the presentation of sociolinguistic materials. In addition, the material obtained, processed and assessed using statistical criteria requires a sociolinguistic interpretation, which allows us to identify natural connections between language and social institutions. When collecting information, sociolinguists most often resort to observation and various types of surveys; The general scientific method of analysis is also widely used written sources. Of course, these methods are often combined: after preliminary analysis written sources, the researcher formulates a certain hypothesis, which he tests during the observation process; To verify the collected data, he can resort to a survey of a certain part of the social community of interest to him.

Along with ordinary observation, sociolinguists often use the method of participant observation. . This way of studying human behavior consists in the fact that the researcher himself becomes a member of the group he observes. Naturally, participant observation can be when nothing prevents the researcher from identifying himself with members of the observed social group - according to national, linguistic, behavioral and other characteristics. For a European, for example, it is difficult to carry out participant observation in groups of Chinese or blacks; an adult researcher cannot be completely assimilated into the group of adolescents he studies; a city dweller-dialectologist is always perceived by villagers as a person not from their environment, etc.

If there are no such obstacles and the observer is able to infiltrate the group, becoming “the same as everyone else,” he can successfully hide his research intentions, and then his actions. “Exposure” leads to failure, and in some situations it is dangerous for the life of the observer. Thus, two European ethnographers studied the lifestyle, behavioral characteristics and language of dervishes - wandering Muslim monks and mimicked them so skillfully that the monks mistook them for their own; They were exposed because of their habit of mechanically beating out a musical rhythm with their feet, which is completely alien to the dervishes. There is a known case with a prisoner-philologist who, in the camp, tried to keep notes of thieves' jargon in secret from other prisoners. However, his position as an intellectual outsider among the criminal people quite quickly led to the fact that his neighbors in the barracks exposed him and considered him an informer. With great difficulty, he still managed to prove the scientific nature of his studies, after which they even began to help him in collecting material.

Both with external and with participant observation, the researcher must record what is being observed. speech material. Fixation can be carried out in two main ways: manually and instrumentally.

Handwritten notes are convenient because you don’t need to specially prepare for them: if you have a pencil and paper, and your ear is “tuned” to perceive certain facts of speech, then provided that the observed object (a person or group of people) does not know about your intentions or, knowing, does not protest against them, recordings can be carried out relatively easily and successfully. Handwritten notes are especially effective when observing random units of language that rarely appear in the speech stream - words, word forms, syntactic constructions. If the task is to study not individual facts, but, for example, coherent speech, the nature of dialogic interaction between people in the process of communication, features of pronunciation, intonation and speech behavior in general, then handwritten notes are unproductive: the observer manages to record only individual links in the speech chain, and the choice of these links is always subjective.

Therefore, most of the problems solved by modern sociolinguistics in the study of oral speech are characterized by the use of instrumental technology - mainly tape recorders and voice recorders (video cameras are also used to record gestural and facial behavior). This application can be open or hidden. When using a recording device openly, the researcher tells the informants the purpose (true or false) of his recordings and tries, in the process of observing their speech, to reduce the so-called “microphone effect,” which to one degree or another constrains the natural behavior of the individuals being studied. The microphone effect is completely removed when recording technology is used covertly, when the informant is not informed of its use; in this case, the data obtained characterize the natural, spontaneous speech behavior of native speakers.

Widely used in sociolinguistics are written questionnaires, oral interviews, tests and some other methodological methods of data collection aimed at identifying certain patterns in language proficiency and in the use of it by speakers in certain communicative conditions.

The collected data is compiled into tables and processed - manually, if there is little data, or mechanized, which is used in mass sociolinguistic surveys. This is followed by a mathematical and statistical assessment the received material and its meaningful interpretation, with the help of which the researcher identifies the relationship between the use of the language and certain social characteristics of its speakers.

Areas of sociolinguistics.

Synchronous sociolinguistics, which deals primarily with the study of relationships between language and social institutions, and diachronic sociolinguistics, which studies primarily the processes that characterize the development of language in connection with the development of society. Depending on the scale of objects that sociolinguistics is interested in, macrosociolinguistics and microsociolinguistics are distinguished. . The first studies linguistic relations and processes occurring in large social associations - states, regions, large social groups, often distinguished conditionally according to one or another social characteristic (for example, age, level of education, etc.). Microsociolinguistics deals with the analysis of linguistic processes and relationships that take place in real and at the same time small groups of native speakers - in the family, production team, play groups of teenagers, etc.

Depending on what sociolinguistic research is aimed at - the development of general problems associated with the relationship “language - society”, or for experimental testing of theoretical hypotheses, a distinction is made between theoretical and experimental sociolinguistics. Theoretical sociolinguistics studies the most general, fundamental problems - such as, for example:

– identification of the most significant patterns of language development and proof of their social nature (along with those patterns that are determined by the self-development of language);

– study of the social conditionality of the functioning of language, the dependence of its use in different spheres of communication on social and situational variables;

– analysis of the processes of speech communication, in which such factors as the set of social roles performed by the participants in communication, the socio-psychological conditions for the implementation of certain speech acts, their illocutionary power, the ability of speakers to switch from one code to another, etc. are of decisive importance .;

– study of the interaction and mutual influence of languages ​​in the conditions of their existence in one society; problems of interference and borrowing elements of contact language; theoretical substantiation of the processes of formation of intermediate language formations - interdialects, koine, pidgins, as well as a number of other problems.

Sociolinguistic theorists recognized early on the need to reinforce general provisions about the dependence of language on social factors by mass empirical material (the fact that this material should have been mass is quite natural, since it is required to prove social, group, and not individual connections of native speakers with the nature of their use of linguistic means). M.V. Panov in Russia and U. Labov in the USA were, apparently, the first sociolinguists who, in the early 1960s, independently turned to experiment as a necessary stage in sociolinguistic research and a way to prove certain theoretical constructs.

This gave impetus to the development of experimental sociolinguistics.

A modern sociolinguistic experiment is a very labor-intensive task, requiring great organizational efforts and considerable financial costs. After all, the experimenter sets himself the task of obtaining fairly representative and, if possible, objective data about the speech behavior of people or about other aspects of the life of a linguistic community, and such data should characterize the different social groups that form the linguistic community. Therefore, reliable tools are needed experimental research, a proven methodology for conducting it, trained interviewers who are able to strictly follow the intended program of the experiment, and, finally, a correctly selected set of surveyed informants from whom the required data must be obtained.

True, the history of science knows cases of less cumbersome organization of sociolinguistic experiments. As he says, half-jokingly and half-seriously, in his book Sociolinguistics R. Bell, one of the first experimental sociolinguists can be considered the ancient military leader Jephthai, who belonged to the Gileadite tribe. To prevent the penetration of the enemy “fifth column” - representatives of the Ephraimite tribe - into his armed forces, Jephthai ordered every warrior who came to the crossing of the Jordan River: “Say shibboleth». Shibboleth means "flow" in Hebrew. Such an order on the river bank was quite appropriate. The point, however, was that the representatives of the Gileadite tribe easily pronounced the sound [š], but the Ephraimites did not know how to do this. The result of the experiment was bloody: “everyone who could not pronounce shibboleth in the Gileadite manner, they took and slaughtered... and at that time forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell” (Book of Judges).

Many sciences, in addition to the theoretical development of the problems facing them, solve problems related to practice; usually areas dealing with this are called applied . There is also applied sociolinguistics. What kind of problems does it solve?

These are, for example, the problems of teaching native and foreign languages. Traditional methods of teaching languages ​​are based on dictionaries and grammars, which record mainly the intrastructural properties of the language and the rules for the use of words and syntactic structures determined by its system itself. Meanwhile, the actual use of language is regulated by at least two more classes of variables - the social characteristics of the speakers and the circumstances in which verbal communication occurs. Consequently, language teaching is most effective when the methods of teaching it and educational literature take into account not only the linguistic rules and recommendations themselves, but also various kinds of “external” factors.

Sociolinguistic information is important when developing problems and practical measures that make up the language policy of the state. Language policy requires special flexibility and consideration of many factors in multi-ethnic and multilingual countries, where issues of the relationship between languages ​​in their communicative functions and use in various spheres of social life are closely related to the mechanisms of political governance, national harmony and social stability. One of the instruments of language policy is language laws. Although their development as a whole is the competence of lawyers: they must clearly and consistently formulate provisions relating, for example, to the status of the state language, its functions, protection of the monopoly use of the state language in the most important social spheres, regulation of the use of “local” languages, etc. ., - it is obvious that the creation of linguistically literate laws on language is possible only on the basis of comprehensive knowledge of the functional properties of the language, the degree of development of certain systems in it (for example, a system of special terminologies, scientific language, the language of diplomatic documents, the style of official business communication and etc.), a more or less detailed idea of ​​“what a given language can” and “what it cannot” in various social and situational conditions of its use.

The areas of application of sociolinguistic theory and the results of sociolinguistic research to solving problems of social practice often depend on the nature of the language situation in a particular country. In multilingual countries there are the same problems, in monolingual countries they are completely different. In conditions of multilingualism, there are acute issues of choosing one macro-intermediary language, which would serve as a means of communication for all nations inhabiting the country, and, possibly, would have the status of a state language; in conditions of linguistic homogeneity, the problems of standardization and codification of the literary language, its relations with other subsystems of the national language are relevant. Hence, there are different emphases in the development of sociolinguistic problems and in the orientation of applied areas of sociolinguistics.

Literature:

Panov M.V. Principles of sociological study of the Russian language. – Russian language and Soviet society, book. 1. M., 1968
Avrorin V.A. Problems of learning the functional side of language (on the subject of sociolinguistics). L., 1975
Zvegintsev V.A. About the subject and method of sociolinguistics. – News of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Literature and Language Series, vol. 4. M., 1976
Nikolsky L.B. Synchronic sociolinguistics. M., 1976
Schweitzer A.D. Modern sociolinguistics. Theory. Problems. Methods. M., 1976
Krysin L.P. Language in modern society . M., 1977
Social and functional differentiation of literary languages. Rep. ed. M.M. Gukhman. M., 1977
Schweitzer A.D., Nikolsky L.B. Introduction to Sociolinguistics. M., 1978
Panov M.V. Sociophonetics. – In the book: Panov M.V. Modern Russian language. Phonetics. M., 1979
Theoretical problems of social linguistics. M., 1981
Zvegintsev V.A. Social and linguistic in sociolinguistics. – News of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Literature and Language Series, vol. 3. M., 1982
Vinogradov V.A., Koval A.I., Porkhomovsky V.Ya. Sociolinguistic typology. - In the book: West Africa. M., 1984
Krysin L.P. Sociolinguistic aspects of studying modern Russian language. M., 1989
Diachronic sociolinguistics. Rep. ed. V.K. Zhuravlev. M., 1993
Mechkovskaya N.B. . Social linguistics. M., 1996
Belikov V.I., Krysin L.P. . Sociolinguistics. M., 2000



Areas of language use.

1. Areas of language use

2. Speech and non-speech communication, communicative situation

3. Verbal communication, behavior, act

4. Communicative competence of a native speaker

1. We have already talked a lot about the fact that language serves a wide range of communicative needs of humans and society. In accordance with various areas of human activity - production, education, science, culture, everyday life - areas of use of language, or languages, if we are talking about a non-monolingual society, are distinguished. Scope of language use- this is an area of ​​extra-linguistic activity, characterized by the homogeneity of communicative needs, to satisfy which speakers carry out a certain selection of linguistic units and the rules for their combination with each other. As a result of such a selection of linguistic means and the rules for their combination with each other, a more or less stable tradition is formed, correlating a certain human activity with a certain language code, i.e. with an independent language or a subsystem of the national language (jargon, argot, language styles). Thus, for medieval Europe, Latin was a means of communication used in worship, as well as in science. In Russia, the role of a communicative tool for a long time was played by the Church Slavonic language (the language of church books, services).

Languages ​​and subsystems may not be strictly distributed among areas of activity: one of the languages ​​or language systems predominates in one area, but the use of units of other languages ​​or language systems is allowed. Thus, in Belarus, the Belarusian language is used in the field of humanities education (this is encouraged by the purposeful policy of the state), but here you can also find elements of the closely related Russian language. In the sphere of production, despite state support of the native language, Russian predominates.

2. Speech and non-speech communication. In sociolinguistics, communication is a synonym for communication. Communication can be verbal and non-verbal, verbal and non-verbal. Human communication in a number of sports games does not necessarily include a verbal component or includes it minimally in the form of exclamations. Much of human communication occurs through speech. These types of communication are primarily of interest to sociolinguists. Speech communication occurs within the framework of a communicative situation.

The communicative situation, as we said earlier, depends on the social roles and style of communication between partners (at the same level, relations of superiority, subordination). The communicative situation has a certain structure. It consists of the following components: the speaker (addressee), the listener (addressee), the relationship between the speaker and the listener and the associated tone of communication (official, neutral, friendly), the purpose of communication, the means of communication (language or its subsystems), the method of communication ( oral or written), place of communication.

These components are situational variables. A change in each of them leads to a change in communicative communication and, consequently, to a variation in the means used by the participants in the situation. Thus, communication between a judge and a witness in a courtroom is distinguished by the greater formality of the means used, but if communication is outside a court session, the place changes and speech becomes freer. One parameter of the communicative situation changes and the choice of language units immediately changes. If the judge and the witness know each other, then the setting of the court session and their roles prescribe for them the official tone of communication; outside this environment, when returning to the “acquaintance-acquaintance” (“buddy-buddy”) role relationship, the tone of communication can change to informal, even familiar, using the means of colloquial language, vernacular, and jargon.

In real communication, situational variables interact with each other, and each of them acquires a certain meaning in relation to the others. If the place of communication changes, this means a change in its purpose, as well as the relationship between the participants in communication and the tone of communication.

Let us give an example of recording the speech of the same person speaking in different settings about a scientific trip. While maintaining the topic, the entire range of situational variables changes: purpose, place, relationships between communication participants, tone, contact. Accordingly, the entire structure of speech changes: the choice of vocabulary, syntactic structures, the intonation structure of the statement, the logical sequence of presentation.

1. And this protoplasm had to…..no, not even examples or anything….to be found, but to go through the entire card index. And who knows, maybe they’re not there at all, these terms (conversation with friends)

2. It doesn’t matter if I went: I didn’t have a list of words, I had to somehow contrive to find in the card index not individual terms, but the entire group of terms. Moreover, no one - neither the head of the card index, nor I myself knew whether they were even there at all (conversation with colleagues) - more official, although it can be contrived.

3. It was very difficult to find the necessary terms in the card index: I did not have an exact list, I had to largely go by touch (oral report on a business trip at a department meeting) - (go by touch)

4. During the business trip, I collected materials about the group of terms I was researching. Despite the difficulties - the lack of an exact list of words, the lack of information about the presence of terms on the topic of interest to me in the card index, I managed to find a number of linguistically meaningful examples (from the official report on the business trip).

Situational variables have different weights in terms of their influence on the nature of the communicative situation. Those variables that reflect the social structure of communication have greater weight, while variables that reflect the variability of the communicative situation have less weight. The most significant is the purpose of communication. Despite the fact that tonality (the nature of the relationship between speakers) at first glance is a secondary variable, in reality speakers not only clearly feel the differences between formal, neutral and friendly communication, but also know in advance which tonality corresponds to certain communicative situations. In contrast, the weight of the place variable is significantly less than the goal, the tone of communication. The change in location is significant when combined with other variables. If, with a change in place, the dependence of one participant in communication on another changes, then the nature of verbal communication changes (conversation with a policeman on the street and in the police station). In other cases, with a change in place, the nature of communication does not change (communication between teacher and student in the classroom and outside the classroom).

3. Speech communication is a synonym for speech communication. It is important to emphasize that both terms denote a two-way process, the interaction of people during communication. In contrast, the term speech behavior emphasizes the one-sidedness of the process: it denotes those properties and features that distinguish the speech and speech reactions of the speaker or listener. The term speech behavior is convenient when describing monologue forms of speech. However, it is insufficient when analyzing dialogue. Thus, the term speech communication includes the term speech behavior.

The term speech act denotes specific speech actions of the speaker within a particular communicative situation. For example, in a situation of purchasing a product, a dialogue is possible, including various speech acts: a request for information (How much does it cost? Who is the manufacturer? What material is it made from?), a message (Two thousand. South Korea. Genuine leather), a request (Please put it aside, I’m running for money), accusation (You gave me the wrong change). I’m running for money), accusation (You gave me the wrong change).

In the mid-20th century, the English philosopher John Austin, and after him the American scientists John Searle and Georg Grice, developed a theory of speech acts, in which they identified a number of patterns characteristic of the process of speech communication, and formulated principles and postulates, following which ensures the success of one or another speech act or speech communication in general. For example: “express yourself clearly”, “Be sincere”, “Be brief”, “Avoid unclear expressions”.

Attempts are being made to develop rules that would not only take into account the patterns of use of speech means, but also regulate their combination with each other, depending on the nature of the communicative situation. An example is the rules developed by the American researcher Erwin-Tripp. She uses the term rule to state certain normative, typical acts of communication. The researcher identifies the following types of rules:

1) Rules for choosing speech means (common for all social strata - specific for social groups and strata) - literary language - jargon, dialect, vernacular

2) Rules to follow, i.e. sequence of speech actions during communication: greeting, gratitude, farewell. In accordance with this, formulas for farewell, invitation, telephone call, and establishment of communicative contact are developed.

3) Rules of co-occurrence: rules for combining in one context certain lexical, phonetic, intonation, syntactic units. Types of these rules: a) horizontal, defining the relationships between units of conversation in time (their temporal sequence). B) vertical, defining relationships in given communicative conditions of units of different levels of linguistic structure (the choice of a normative one must be combined with normative pronunciation).

Despite all the conventionality of the rules considered, the idea of ​​sociolinguistic grammars containing rules for the socio-linguistic behavior of people in various situations is very attractive and productive.

4. In the process of verbal communication, people use the means of language to construct statements that would be understood by the addressee. However, only knowledge of dictionary and grammar is not enough for communication to be successful: you also need to know the conditions for using units and their combination. In addition to grammar, a native speaker must learn situational grammar, which prescribes the use of linguistic means in accordance with the nature of the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, the purpose of communication and other factors that, together with linguistic knowledge, constitute the social competence of the native speaker. The difference between knowledge of a language and mastery of it is that in the first case the individual knows the laws of the language, the nature of the combination of its units, but cannot vary the units of the language depending on the communicative situation.

The scope of communicative competence also includes the rules of etiquette, the rules of communication between a child and an adult, the rules of communication with one’s own and others, superior, inferior and equal, rules for maintaining social distance with significant social asymmetry of communication participants, various behavioral strategies that govern the implementation of such acts as a request , demand, accusation, threat, promise. Most of these rules and strategies are “unwritten.” Situational grammars have not yet been created that would regulate human speech behavior depending on the situation. At the same time, native speakers have rules and strategies for verbal communication in a variety of life circumstances, which ensures their normal and effective interaction with each other.

Control questions:

1) How are the areas of language use distributed in society?

2) What are the differences between verbal and nonverbal communication?

3) How do the parameters of the communicative situation affect speech behavior?

4) How are the factors of a communicative situation distributed depending on their ability to influence speech behavior?

5) What is the difference between communication and behavior?

6) What is a speech act? What types of speech acts can be found in different types of communication?

7) What theories of speech acts do you know? What is the essence of these theories?

8) What is communicative competence, what does it include?