Vol 20, No 2 (2023): BETWEEN THE FOREST AND THE STEPPE: LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLES OF THE VOLGA REGION AND THE URAL

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The Besermans are a small people settled in northern Udmurtia. The unusual combination of the Turkic-Muslim self-designation with the Finno-Ugric language always caused genuine interest in this people. However, scientists still have not reached a consensus regarding the origin of the Besermans. The purpose of this work is to identify and systematize the Turkic names of the details of traditional Beserman clothing, which allows us to study more deeply the Beserman-Turkic relationships, and to obtain new data to unravel the ethnic genesis of the Besermans. In this regard, this work is relevant. The relevance of our work is also due to the possibility of using data in cultural, educational, museum work and in local history courses. The main sources of study are materials of T.I. Teplyashina card catalogue with field records of the Beserman speech. The study was conducted predominantly using a descriptive method. In general, our research confirms the hypothesis about including of the Turkic component in the Beserman ethnos as a result of interethnic marriages. The Chuvash component, which was later replaced by the Tatar superstratum, is quite clearly traced in the ethnogenesis of the Besermans. We have not identified lexical bulgarisms among the studied terminology however they could be replaced by analogous Chuvash word forms as a result of later interaction between ethnic groups.

This article raises the question of the need of studying the modern functioning of Chuvash punctuation on the material of the media language. The topic is relevant due to the fact that in the conditions of developing screen culture, journalists influence the mass consciousness intensively, their speech activity makes an impact on the linguistic tastes of society and reflects the main trends in the actual practice of writing. This is clearly seen in the example of such a stylistically and pragmatically significant unit of media speech as an online analytical newspaper headline. Pursuing the intention of persuasion, journalists use expressive punctuation resources in their headline-making, which allows them to enhance the expressiveness of their utterance and encourage Internet users to read the text. The purpose of the work is to identify some common punctuation strategies of network analytical newspaper headlines in Chuvash language. The research material was a card file of analytical materials of the headlines of the online version of The Khypar newspaper for 2017-2021 collected by the author. Relying on an integrated methodology based on the ideas of communicative-pragmatic and psycholinguistic approaches based on the intentional method, the author identified productive punctuation models of the studied titles, revealing the expressive speech-acting potential of Chuvash punctuation. The article presents and characterizes popular punctuation practices of journalists - cases of using a question mark, an exclamation mark, an ellipsis and quotation marks in the header construction. These punctuation tools allow the writer to express an evaluative attitude to the problem being discussed, convey certain emotions, highlight a significant part of the phrase, place semantic accents. The author comes to the conclusion that the study of the functioning of punctuation marks in media texts allows us to shift the focus from the study of punctuation norms to the subject of speech, to his punctuation activity due to specific intentions and communicative situations.

The study of the terminology of various crafts, including beekeeping, is one of the current trends in modern linguistics. The purpose of the study is to trace the history of the fixation of the words podem ‘bort’ and umorto ‘beehive’ in the Udmurt language, starting from the 18th century - the earliest written monuments - and ending with dictionaries of the modern period, to analyze the development of their semantics, and also to determine the origin. To achieve this goal, the article solves problems focused on identifying and describing the above terms and comparing them with data from other languages. The material of the study was written monuments of the 18th- 19th centuries, modern dictionaries of the Udmurt language, as well as parallels from related and contacting languages. A descriptive method, elements of semantic and etymological analysis are used. The work for the first time traces the history of more than two centuries of fixation of Udmurt words related to beekeeping. The study revealed the expansion of the lexical content of the word umorto in the course of language development. The etymological analysis made it possible to reveal that podem ‘bort’ is a native Udmurt word, and umorto ‘beehive’ was borrowed from Tatar.

The article is devoted to a comparative study of the national and cultural features of the representation of the concept of “war” in the Russian and Chuvash pictures of the world. Based on the material of Russian and Chuvash proverbs and sayings selected from lexicographic and folklore sources, a comprehensive comparative analysis of the concept of “war” at the semantic, pragmatic and culturological levels was conducted for the first time, the features of its verbalization were considered. For the first time, the national-cultural features of the representation of the concept of “war” at the cognitive-discursive level are revealed, which determines the relevance of our research. The analysis made it possible to reveal that the concept of “war” is a universal unit included in the spiritual code of the nation, has a dynamic semantic structure and is multidimensional in its content. As a result of a comparative analysis, it was found that the fundamental values of the moral order in the study of the concept of “war” are the same for both peoples. The speech embodiment of this concept in the Russian and Chuvash language pictures of the world is defined as a process that contradicts the human mind.

This research work has been done in the field of the current literary direction related to the study of local texts, the variety of which is the national text. The national literary text is considered by the authors of the article as a text containing information for the reconstruction by the reader / researcher of the nationally specific socio-cultural space of the people. The studies of the national text in literary translations, namely, the philological analysis of the Mari national text in Russian translations is given in the article. The research materials are the poems of Gennady Oyar, translated into Russian mainly by Gennady Smirnov. The methods of contextual, conceptual and structural-semantic analysis of local texts are used in the work. The article considers the literary techniques and means relevant for the formation of the national text (extra-textual elements, toponyms and anthroponyms, elements of the national landscape, portrait, interior, signs of national life, material and spiritual culture, linguistic inclusions, folklore and mythological images and motifs, etc.). The national text in Russian translations gives a fairly complete picture of the Mari as an ancient people, which has a unique culture, carefully preserves its native language, spiritual traditions, feels a blood connection with distant ancestors, paganism, making up the cultural core of the nation as a society, seeks to preserve spiritual purity and aspiration to the ideals of goodness and beauty.

The aim of the paper is to accentuate the problem of theoretical-and-metidological basis for writing the histories of national literatures of peoples of Russia. The main objectives imply the generalization of the experience on national literatires’ histories writing, mainly on the material of the Volga Region literatures) and to represent the concept of “The History of Tatar Literature” in Russian. Because of the lack of attention to national literatures in Russia various types of histories of national literatures such as academic, popular, educational, are in demand. The D.S. Likhachyov’ idea of theoretical history of literature is chosen as a concept for academic five-volume “History of Tatar Literature” (the project is being realized by the G. Ibraghimov’s Institute of Language, Literature and Arts of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan). At the same time the concept is to be corrected according to the so-called “expectation horizon” of a Russian reader, not being aware of Tatar literature well enough.

The article deals with the study of translingual practices in the works by the Udmurt poet B.V. Anfinogenov. The interest to the questions of transcultural literature is due to the importance of research in cultural diversity of multilingual regions of Russia. The methodological basis of the article is the linguistic analysis of a literary text, synthesis-generalization of the achievements of modern literary criticism, structural analysis of a poetic text, etc. The collection of poetic texts by B. Anfinogenov “Dz’ikya Promo” (2023) is used as the material for analysis. Based on the analysis, the peculiarities of translingual practices representation in the works by B. Anfinogenov are revealed, extra-textual (ethnic and cultural self-identification of the author, themes, foreign language inclusions) and intra-textual (hybrid cultural canons and codes) levels of representation of translingualism are outlined. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the role of graphic determination as well as the use of interlanguage homophony and intertextuality in transcultural literature.

The article deals with the artistic originality of bilingualism of one of the leading modern Mordovian playwrights Alexander Pudin. The most productive types of it in the work of the playwright are defined, and the reasons for the use of two languages in the writing process are identified. The importance of the transition from one language to another is emphasized in order to expand the aesthetic boundaries of the author’s worldview and to accurately convey ethnic nuances to the foreign-language reader and viewer. The author reveals the artistic and aesthetic specificity of the author’s translation, which allowed to reveal more deeply both the conflict collisions of plays and the individual characters of carriers of national character traits. A special place is given to plays in Russian, in which the playwright immerses us in a diverse ethnic palette of perception of the surrounding reality and recreates a bright national flavor through mythological context.

The article attempts to describe the literary space of Yekaterinburg in the late 2010s - early 2020s within the framework of the paradigm of Russian-language literature existing over the borders but structured around the center referred to as “conditional Moscow”. The research methodology combines the analysis of literary life, the socio-literary approach and the theory of place marketing. We are talking not just about agents of literary fields and actors within a literary situation but also about literary brands that help attract symbolic capital to a particular territory. The phenomena of genius loci of A.B. Salnikov, E.V. Simonova, the functioning of cultural institutions that form the literary space of the city, the work of a number of independent projects and initiatives are considered. Particular attention is paid to the levels of interaction between the literature of the city and the center “conditional Moscow”.

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