The Language of Russian Peasants in the Twentieth Century

Alexander D. Nakhimovsky

doi:10.5771/9781498575041

Summary

The Language of Russian Peasants in the Twentieth Century: A Linguistic Analysis and Oral History analyzes the social dialect of Russian peasants in the twentieth century through letters and stories that trace their tragic history. In 1900, there were 100,000,000 peasants in Russia, but by mid-century their language was no longer passed from parents to children, resulting in no speakers of the dialect left today.

In this study, Alexander D. Nakhimovsky argues that for all the variability of local dialects there was an underlying unity in them, which derived from their old shared traditions and oral nature. Their unity is best manifested in word formation, syntax, phraseology, and discourse.

Different social groups followed somewhat different paths through the maze of Soviet history, and peasants' path was one of the most painful. The chronological organization of the book and the analysis of powerful, concise, and simple but expressive language of peasant letters and stories culminate into an oral history of their tragic Soviet experience.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2019
ISBN-Print: 978-1-4985-7503-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-4985-7504-1
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 214
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Preface No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
1. 1.2 Peasant language before 1917 No access
2. 1.3 Examples from Bogoraz, Tenishev No access
3. 1.4 An Initial Generalization: The Peasant Language Profile No access
4. 1.5 A longer story from 1925 No access
5. Conclusions No access
6. Notes No access
1. 2.2 Letters to power: long history pre-1905 No access
2. 2.3 The Revolution of 1905 and New Kinds of Letters No access
3. 2.4 Linguistic Background: Phraseology, Formulaic Language No access
4. 2.5 Revolution and civil war, 1917–1921 No access
5. 2.6 Bolshevik Innovations and Peasant Attitudes No access
6. 2.7 Available Peasant Materials, 1917–1921–1928 No access
7. 2.8 Directions of change No access
8. 2.9 Categories and examples No access
9. Conclusions No access
10. Notes No access
1. 3.2 Letters to the Army and Peasant “Moods” No access
2. 3.3 Personal Letters as a Genre: Tradition, Structure, and Formal Elements No access
3. 3.4 The Source and the Historical Background No access
4. 3.5 Examples of Letters 1: Three Generations No access
5. 3.6 Examples of Letters 2: Old People No access
6. 3.7 Examples of Letters 3: Recent Peasants and Some Success Stories No access
7. 3.8 The Defining Features of Peasant Letters No access
8. 3.9 On Literacy and Letters from Schoolchildren No access
9. 3.10 Discourse and Pragmatic Features No access
10. 3.11 Overlap and Interpenetration with Other Social Groups No access
11. 3.12 Vocabulary, syntax, phraseology No access
12. Conclusions No access
13. Notes No access
1. 4.2 Biographic narratives as historical testimony No access
2. 4.3 Examples, Grouped by History No access
3. 4.4 The Linguistics of Peasant Narratives No access
4. Conclusions: The Unity of Peasant Language No access
5. Notes No access
Bibliography No access Pages 201 - 208
Index No access Pages 209 - 212
About the Author No access Pages 213 - 214