Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Discourse of Argumentation in Totalitarian Language and Post-Soviet Communication Failures
- 2 Russian and Newspeak: Between Myth and Reality
- 3 ‘A Society that Speaks Concordantly’, or Mechanisms of Communication of Government and Society in Old and New Russia
- 4 Legal Literature ‘for the People’ and the Use of Language (Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century)
- 5 ‘How to Write to the Newspaper’: Language and Power at the Birth of Soviet Public Language
- 6 Between the Street and the Kitchen: The Rhetoric of the Social(ist) Meeting in Literature and Cinema
- 7 Was Official Discourse Hegemonic?
- 8 Attempts to Overcome ‘Public Aphasia’: A Study of Public Discussions in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
- 9 Allotment Associations in Search of a New Meaning
- 10 ‘Distances of Vast Dimensions …’: Official versus Public Language (Material from Meetings of the Organising Committees of Mass Events, January–February 2012)
- 11 Insides Made Public: Talking Publicly about the Personal in Post-Soviet Media Culture (The Case of The Fashion Verdict)
- 12 Distorted Speech and Aphasia in Satirical Counterdiscourse: Oleg Kozyrev's ‘Rulitiki’ Internet Videos
- 13 The Past and Future of Russian Public Language
- Notes on Contributors
- Subject Index
- Name Index
13 - The Past and Future of Russian Public Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Discourse of Argumentation in Totalitarian Language and Post-Soviet Communication Failures
- 2 Russian and Newspeak: Between Myth and Reality
- 3 ‘A Society that Speaks Concordantly’, or Mechanisms of Communication of Government and Society in Old and New Russia
- 4 Legal Literature ‘for the People’ and the Use of Language (Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century)
- 5 ‘How to Write to the Newspaper’: Language and Power at the Birth of Soviet Public Language
- 6 Between the Street and the Kitchen: The Rhetoric of the Social(ist) Meeting in Literature and Cinema
- 7 Was Official Discourse Hegemonic?
- 8 Attempts to Overcome ‘Public Aphasia’: A Study of Public Discussions in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century
- 9 Allotment Associations in Search of a New Meaning
- 10 ‘Distances of Vast Dimensions …’: Official versus Public Language (Material from Meetings of the Organising Committees of Mass Events, January–February 2012)
- 11 Insides Made Public: Talking Publicly about the Personal in Post-Soviet Media Culture (The Case of The Fashion Verdict)
- 12 Distorted Speech and Aphasia in Satirical Counterdiscourse: Oleg Kozyrev's ‘Rulitiki’ Internet Videos
- 13 The Past and Future of Russian Public Language
- Notes on Contributors
- Subject Index
- Name Index
Summary
In 2011 we published a book, which ended by proposing to develop a public register of language in Russia (Kharkhordin 2011a). As research by Boris Gladarev showed, there were many differences between contemporary civic associations (for example, the St Petersburg ‘Living City’ movement) and their predecessors of the time of perestroika (for example, the Rescue Group, which defended the Angleterre Hotel and Delvig's house in Leningrad from demolition in 1986), but they retained one feature in common. Both were incapable of discussing their problems in a language which was neither that of intense personal emotion (like posts in blogs or on Facebook) nor that of official government pronouncements (at the municipal, regional or federal level). Between the language of love and hate and the dispassionate language of officialdom there was no register of public language in which a group could swiftly and efficiently come to a decision about, firstly, what it wanted or, secondly, what it was going to do and how it was going to do it (cf. Chapter 6 in this book).
One of the conclusions of our book was a call to take a textbook of parliamentary procedure (or its American adaptation to associations of civil society) and adapt its translation to the needs of contemporary Russia (Kharkhordin 2011b: 525). However, discussions during the conference on public language in Russia that took place in January 2013 made me change my opinion. I still think that it would be useful to translate a short textbook of parliamentary procedure and run it past a few focus groups of potential users. Perhaps such an attempt at cross-cultural translation might draw our attention to some aspect of Russian life that remains at present unnoticed. Besides, we would understand more about other countries in Europe and in North America.
But considering that there have already been such attempts at translation, and that they have not been successful, it now seems to me that an attempt to develop our own Russian textbook of the procedures of public language would stand more chance of success.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Public Debate in RussiaMatters of (Dis)order, pp. 281 - 333Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016