The “Precedent World” of F.M. Dostoevsky in the Socio-Cultural and “Playing Ground” of Modern Media

Precedent cultural signs from the citation source “Russian classical literature” are in wide demand in the modern media space, including both professional and social media. This article studies the problem of identifying the reasons for this demand and the functioning features of these specific cultural signs in canonical and transformed forms in the context of the reception of works by F.M. Dostoevsky in modern media texts. The article also raises the question of the nature of transformations of textbook precedent signs functioning as the author’s evaluation of current social events. The aim of this research is to identify two trends that are characteristic of both professional and social media. On the one hand, it is the trend to transform various precedent phenomena (precedent onyms, utterances, situations) in order to create a comic effect and a language game. On the other hand, it is the trend to comprehend the content of a cultural sign for the argumentation of the author’s position. The material of the research is constituted by media texts of different genres and with varying socio-political connotation which contain precedent phenomena from the “F.М. Dostoevsky” source sphere and which are published in Russian print media, as well as posted on social media. These media texts were obtained using the manual sampling method and with the help of the Russian National Corpus. The research made it possible to present the “precedent world” of F.M. Dostoevsky reflected in media sources in proper linguistic terms (from the point of view of the nature of linguistic transformations and their interaction with the context) and in linguoethical terms (from the point of view of the ethical correctness of free use of textbook signs of high culture). The analysis resulted in the identification of various ways of foregrounding precedent cultural signs in different media genres. It also helped establish that the replication of “precedent cliches” in the digital media environment leads to devaluation of the content of a cultural sign, while the socio-political analytical press, on the contrary, shows demand for its message, its social and philosophical content, which is relevant for understanding the events taking place in the country and in the world, and the “eternal” questions of life.