Linguocultural Markers of Literary Texts by B.L. Vasiliev

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Abstract

The effectiveness of speech communication depends on the immersion in the uniqueness and specificity of the national culture through the knowledge of reality. A literary text transmits background knowledge and experiences, which in the process of perception are not only interpreted by a reader, but also form the value universals. Dialogue as a form of intercultural communication is due to the impact on the addressee, that is, a pragmatic approach that contributes to: 1) tolerance of thinking, 2) the preservation of traditions and cultural experience, 3) acculturation as a process and result of speech and thought activity. The purpose of the study is to identify linguistic and cultural markers of literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev, which represent the national and cultural specifics of the verbalization of a literary word, since those are linguocultural factors that make it possible to reveal the mental nature of the text and interpret the ethnoculturally conditioned semantic content. The anthropocentric orientation of the communicative-cognitive methodology and the tasks set predetermined the nature of the research methods. The leading method of describing the ethno-cultural universals of a literary text is contextual-semantic, since the actualization of ethno-cultural influence is interpreted in context. The contextual-semantic method allows explore ethnocultural constants in the following areas: 1) identifying and comprehending ethnocultural markers of literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev; 2) perception and interpretation of ethno-cultural constants in the literary texts of B.L. Vasiliev. Note that the literary texts of B.L. Vasilyev allow to form the culture of a reader’s personality.

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Introduction

For the modern interpretation of the multicultural world, the dialogue of cultures is one of the most productive forms of intercultural communication and interaction. it is just in course of the dialogue of cultures that the commonly accepted universal system of values by all the parties is being developed, forming the global culture to uphold genuine values and humanism.

The dialogue of cultures represents many a century interaction not only aimed at mutual influence of cultures, but also at conserving each and every of national cultures in their originality. A track of the past century tragedies and modern events emphasize the dire necessity to seek for the effective dialogue as the dialogue between various cultures means the understanding of the common (unitary) destiny of the humanity under the conditions of the globalization of the world.

interrelationship of language and culture was foregrounded by studying linguistic means in the inseparable interaction of training, education and socialization through immersing in speech culture, national mentality, worldview, traditions, spiritual practices ‒ so to say, everything that makes up the phenomenon of culture. Linguists studying the relationship of language and culture made a conclusion that learning language just as the means of communication without mastering the spirit of culture and national consciousness is only mechanical using of speech which has got nothing in common with the knowledge of language (N.F. Alefirenko, S.N. ASrtanovskij, A.R. Arutunov, N.D. Arutunova, M.M. Bakhtin, Eu.M. Vereschagin and V.G. Kostomarov, N.V. Kulibina, L.V. Kulikova, V.A. Maslova, i.i. Nikilaeva, Eu.i. Passov, A.A. Potyebnya, Yu.Eu. Prokhorov, A.P. Sadokhin, V.N. Telia, S.G. Ter-Minasova, N.i. Tolstoy, S.E. Tupikova, W. von Humboldt, G. Cohen, E. Kassirer, J.L. Weisgerber, M. Sheller, K. Fossler, D. Matsumoto, E. Sapire, B. Worf).

«National-and-cultural character of a literary text depends on the connotative and notional content of a literary work. in modern science, the given cognitive-anddiscursive phenomenon has got a wide range of nominations: “cultural component”, “cultural-and civilizational co-meaning” (N.G. Komlev); “nationally specified cultural component” (Yu.A. Bel’chikov); “cultural connotation” (V.i. Goverlovskij, G.V. Tokarev); “cultural-and-national connotation” (V.N. Telia); “ethnocultural information” (E.L. Berezovich): “ethnocultural specifics of concepts” (T.A. Fesenko) [3].

According to i.A. Sternin, linguocultural specifics of linguistic phenomena is «just the unique reflection within linguistic phenomena as the phenomena of national culture, which doesn’t fall for any practical identification and ideographical rational explanation» [16. S. 12—13]. Discussing language and traditional culture, E.L. Berezovich remarks: «Ethnolinguistics studies the ethnocultural information as the information about the world which is fixed in the symbolic form, that is, it is marked linguoculturally» [4. S. 9]. «Linguocultural engrams, or memory traces ˂…˃ depend on the laws of linguoculture itself, which reflects the interior links of the poetic arsenal of a text and culture. The unity of language, more precisely, of its poetical means and culture are represented here in two ways: 1) it’s the unity of a system’s cultural values; and 2) the structural integrity of the cultural space from the historic point of view and the modern one, as well, and it reveals itself both on the thesaurus (dictionary) and on the semiotic (sign-and-symbolic) levels» [11. S. 199].

Let’s get down to review the cultural values, cultural space and linguocultural markers in literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev.

National-and-cultural and semantic interpretation  of the literary texts by Boris Vasiliev

in this study, the cultural competence is understood as «that part of the national culture which a man has assimilated and uses it both theoretically and practically» [14. S. 24]. As N.F. Alefirenko states, the turning of a man into a personality «is taking place within the frames of a definite value-notion field of an ethnic culture as far as in the language of the culture creating personality, and a specific ideal content is being revealed and interpreted. The spirit and the culture of a personality are developed in the process of interpreting an ethnoculture in the forms of native language due to which the meaning of both personal and social life is comprehended» [1. S. 62].

The definition of “culture” is characterized by multi-vectoral handlings, so let’s treat its properties and B.L  Vasiliev author’s explication of the phenomenon of “culture”: it’s the culture that marks the dialogue among the language bearers; the dialogue in course of forming of self-relation through emotions and evaluations; the dialogue with the epoch, generations, with other countries and nations.

The subject of culture makes the keynote of the whole creative work of B.L  Vasiliev and it appears as a peculiar barometer of human and social morality and virtues as a whole, thus verbalizing the author’s linguistic worldview: «Under the notion of culture, Russia understands the complete spectrum of spiritual survival of a man, and above all, ‒ the morality, the ethics. The morality of a personality, the morality of a society, the notions of human rights, the honor and dignity, the freedom of a personality and solid public protection of this personality <…>. Culture is the right of everybody for the freedom of conscience, speech, self-expression and realization, the security of residence, voluntary choice of dwelling space. It’s the attitude to women, childhood, senior citizenship. Culture is the historic memory of a nation, its millennial traditions, the arts, religion, national cuisine, the system of family education, the concept of the duty before the society <…> and the whole historically formed social world, which we used to name a nation» [6. S. 6].

in the story “The Burning Bush”, Boris Vasiliev by means of characters’ speech, maintains the dialogue with the epoch on the culture of the wartime: « — Знаешь, чем страшна война, кроме жертв, разрушений, горя? Тем, что лишает человека культуры. И не просто лишает, а обесценивает, уничтожает её. — Почему это? Сколько на фронте концертов было, артисты приезжали, а ты говоришь. — Концерт — знак культуры, а я говорю об атмосфере, в которой живёт современный человек и без которой он превращается в животное. Культура поведения, культура знаний, быта, общения, то есть культура каждого дня — вот чего лишает нас война» («‒ Do you know what makes the horrors of war except victims, damages and sorrows? It deprives a man of culture. And not just deprives, but devaluates and abolishes it. — And why this? And how many concerts were at the fronts?? Artists came, and you say this. ‒ Concerts are the signs of culture, and I speak about the atmosphere where a modern man lives and without which he turns into a beast. The culture of behavior, the culture of knowledge, everyday life, communication, that is the culture of everyday ‒ that’s all the war deprives us»)[1] [7. S. 159].

The pragmatics of linguistic studies alongside with other humanities and spiritually applied practices couldn’t and shouldn’t stay apart from the actuality and topicality of the issue of the efficiency of the intercultural dialogue. The dialogue of cultures previews mutual understanding and respect at every stage and level of human existence: religion, arts, science and language aiming at preventing conflicts as well as ceasing the dominance of human values being translated and the ideals of one of the parties. Language is the treasurer of the unique life experience, and the dialectic unity of language and culture makes the main treasure of a nation both as a process and a result. in the story “The Burning Bush”, the speech generative intention of a communicative process reflects spiritual and moral values of the Russian ethic community in its dialogue with the multicultural world.

Meaning generative factor of the text by Boris Lvovich Vasiliev conceives the antiwar motives and grounds that make it sound the author’s voice: war is the mother of unborn children, and woman’s duty is the motherhood, which together with love, as well as the culture itself, has nothing to do with war. The beloved man of pregnant Tonya who commands the squadron dies: «Пуля разлучила. Убила и любовь её единственную, и все надежды разом <…> — Мне воевать надо, а не рожать. Я этому больше не обучена. — Ты женщина, у тебя есть долг. — Рожать — это не долг, это физиология. Долг — умирать, когда не хочется <…> Детей у неё не было. Были три ранения, были контузия и два инсульта. Были три ордена <…> Были всяческие значки <…> А вот детей у Антонины Федоровны Иваньшиной никогда не было» («The bullet separated us. It killed both ‒ her unique sole love, and all the hopes at once <…> — I must make war but not have a baby. I am nurtured to do it. ‒ You are a woman, and you have a duty. — To have babies ‒ is not a duty, it’s physiology. It’s a duty to die when you wouldn’t like it. <…> She had no babies. She had three wounds, one blast injury and two cerebral crises. She has got three medals. <…> She has got different insignia. <…> But Antonina Feodorovna Ivanshina has never-ever got babies or children») [7. S. 155].

Considering the fact of the given implicit information, one should tell that it’s a question of linguistic relativity as of the sent and perceived information between a reader and an author. The concept of linguistic relativity lies in that the bearers of different cultures perceive and evaluate one and the same facts and categories of the real in different ways, because those differences are determined by thinking and cognitive processes in comparison with cause-and-consequence connections, and correspondingly, are not only verbalized but also comprehended differently.

A literary text raising the issues of general human values is a hypertext in relation to various cultures because the community of the emerging empathy to the characters and definite literary situations wherein those characters act, creates cognitive and linguocultural links between the communicants ‒ the author and readers who conceive the literary reality by means of an imaginative, picturesque word.

Therefore, a reader can’t stay indifferent to the fate of Antonina, whose youth has fallen for the wartime: more and more, she began to think about her youth: «Не о ее героических деяниях, не о ее страданиях и жертвах, а о счастье, которое невозможно ни заменить героизмом, ни затмить жертвами <…> Рос бы сейчас синеглазый Васильевич или Васильевна. И была бы ты, Тонька, и в самом деле и мамой и бабушкой, и не было бы счастливее тебя на всем белом свете, но разве молодость думает о собственной старости? А рос бы сын или дочь. Васильевичи» Neither about heroic deeds, nor about sufferings and victims, but about happiness which couldn’t have been substituted neither by heroism nor heeded by victims <…> There could have been growing up a blue-eyed Vasilievich or Vasilievna. And you, Ton’ka, could have really been a mother and a grandmother, and could have been the happiest woman in the whole world, but weather the youth thinks about its own senility? And there could have been growing up a son or a daughter, and both Vasilieviches») [7. S. 218—219].

So, the process of conceiving a literary text is determined by influencing an addressee which means a pragmatic approach: 1) thinking and tolerance; 2) cohesion, development and conservation of traditions and cultural experience; 3) culturalization as both a process and a result of speech-and-thought activity.

Speech communication efficiency depends on the immersion into the uniqueness and specifics of a national culture contributing to linguistic phenomena and linguistic worldview which also reflect extra-linguistic facts by means of the reality perception. A literary text translates the background knowledge and experience which in course of perception are not only interpreted by a reader, but also form the value universals. in the story “The Burning Bush”, words create the coordinate plane of a cultural action model in the antihuman war space: «Ты делалась грубее, жестче, резче, твёрже, непреклоннее — разве это женские достоинства? Сомнительно. Женские качества — мягкость, нежность, ласковость: всё то, что тебе приходилось подавлять в себе ежедневно и ежечасно <…> Тут мужской закон действует, древний, как само человечество: убей или убьют тебя. И все, все вокруг было направлено на исполнение этого закона; все решительно: грубость, жестокость…»You became ruder, tougher, sharper, harder, grimier ‒ if those are woman’s merits? Rather doubtful. Women’s qualities are softness, tenderness, gentleness: everything that you had to suppress in yourself every day and hour <…> There acts the men’s law, as ancient as a mankind itself: kill or you’ll be killed. And all over everything existing around was aimed at using that law; definitely everything: rudeness, cruelty…») [7. S. 231].

We’d have to note that on the communicative approach, the imagery, exemplification and demonstrativeness of a literary word could make an informative constituent of the cognitive activity and fulfil the cumulative function. The self-recollections of Boris Vasiliev become the impressions of his characters in a literary text, and which is why they are allegorical, metaphorical and imaginative: «И приехали на линию Ленинградской обороны. Все там осталось в том виде, как было в войну. Заплывшие окопы, заросшие блиндажи, колючая проволока, земля, сплошь усеянная осколками, изломанным оружием и позеленевшими патронами, будто превратившимися в семена… А может, и вправду в семена? Разве война не сеет саму себя для будущих поколений?..»And they arrived at the Leningrad defensive position. Everything remained there as it was during the war. Guttered trenches, overgrown trench shelters, barbed wire, the ground dotted with debris everywhere, broken guns and green-colored shells as if turned into seeds … And they might have become seeds, indeed? Doesn’t the war plant its own self for the future generations, ») [7. S. 231].

Culturally conditioned relativism of the initial system of notions, thinking and behavior determine the communicants’ behavior in course of literary text perception, and so it makes functionally relevant communicative approach because the applied linguistic formula in certain speech situations set the direction and trend to thinking and reflect cognitive processes in speech: «the overwhelming amount of knowledge is obtained by a man through the verbalized knowledge, that is, through language» [10. S. 11].

it’s worth mentioning that the objectivity of the information rendered in relation to the subject seems rather relative because the reader immerges in that emotive background which makes up the text’s meaningful content, and due to this, any literary text represents spiritually valuable universals as it affects a person (personality) in course of perceiving the literary reality translated by the author. in course of cross-cultural communication, linguistic means of a literary text function as a cultural code which makes the indicator of the country’s cultural life and reflects the system of cultural values in the definite linguistic environment through the imagery of words: «мы же с вами родственники по Великой Отечественной войне, только вы яблонька, а я яблочко; а книги умирают молча; это у вас они — легкие, а у меня… как свинцовый сурик» (о простреленных легких) («we are relations by the Great Patriotic War, but you’re only a small apple-tree, and I’m an apple; and books die in silence; so you have them light-weighted, and I … have them red lead weight» (about perforated lungs) [7].

The functions of lexical and syntactical constructions repetitions help generate the emotive perception of a text. in the end of the story, Tonya doesn’t die, but enters another world where the late Vasily meets her: «так они познакомились», «им еще непросто было», «сердце в ней оборвалосьи еще раз в ней все оборвалось», «зарубцевалось и это ранение», «так возникла систематак сложилосьтак и продолжалось… и так шло…», «А она никогда не была невестой, но об этом потомпосле, потом. Об этом потом», «вновь отыскала в себе силы и смысл жить дальше», «он. Тот самый… он…», «А может, ты и вправду моя мама, тетя, Тоня?» thus they got to know each other», «yet, it wasn’t so easy to them», «her heart has ended offand once again, everything has ended off», «and this wound has scarred», «so the system emerged … so it has formed … so it continued … so it went on …», «And she had never been a bride, but let’s talk about it later ‒ afterwards, later. About it later», «once again, anew she found the strength and sense to live on», «He. The very He … he …», «And maybe, you’re really my mother, or aunt, Tonya?») [7].

Linguistic field of the literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev is characterized by a wide range of expressive and imaginative means which allows identify its specifics, namely: 1) individual codes of expressive and imaginative signs; 2) imagery of the inner form of words; 3) connotative implication of meaningful content, revealed by means of the discursive explication of hidden cognitive resources. Artistic and imaginative speech-and-thought implication is the main feature of B.L. Vasiliev’s literary texts.

in course of cross-cultural communication, one could observe the tendency to find common points of contact, the reliance for the future fruitful co-existence and socialization in the given society. in this case, mutual understanding is not a prerequisite, but the result to recognize the solidarity and commonness, to accept another worldview, the respect of traditions ‒ of spiritual values of a nation, to overcome psychological, emotional and sensory barriers. The story “The Burning Bush” is the very text to reflect the interaction of a man with his own culture, the influence of culture on a man, and vice versa, a man on the culture, while the meaningful text field vividly demonstrates the issues of common human ideals corresponding to ethical and moral reader’s expectations. Boris Vasiliev expresses general and common ethical-and-spiritual human values, the striving for the transformation and ongoing dynamics of a human personality, the tendency of its renewal and resurrection.

While sharing hearty warmth and care, taking student girls for the daughters, growing younger in the soul, turning the lifetime backwards, the main heroine recognizes her debt to the youth and the next generation because according to B. Vasiliev, the time is relative and arbitrary as well as cyclic: we are them, and they are us: «А они сегодняшние просто-напросто свободнее нас вчерашних. Свободнее, раскованнее, естественнее — это мы им дали свободу. Там, на залитых кровью полях Великой Отечественной <…> Мы не другие, мы новые, понимаете? Вы старые, а мы новые. Новые! <…> И это абсолютно верно: они действительно новые. Качественный скачок, оплаченный нашими жертвами. Кровью, болезнями, голодом и холодом всего народа. Вот что следует непременно проследить в книге: рост новых людей, новой поросли нашей страны»And today’s them to compare with yesterday’s us are nothing less than being more independent, free. More independent, free, more unselfconscious, relaxed, more natural ‒ it’s us who gave them freedom. There, on the bloodshed battlefields of the Great Patriotic War <…> We aren’t the others, we are new, do you understand? You are old, but we are new. New! <…> And it’s absolutely true: they are really new. The qualitative change, paid with our victims. With the blood, famine and cold of the whole nation. This is that should be necessarily traced in the book: the growth of new people, new growth of this country») [7. S. 211—212].

Having turned dead-hearted at war, Tonya could revive her soul for love which is why time flew otherwise for her, i.e. backwards, and in her heart and soul, she was growing younger. The writer measures the text denotative field not only in centenaries and centuries, but in epochs, transforming its linear structure into a cyclic type filling the semantic field with eternity.

The heroin studies history, but she doesn’t understand «каким образом дата рождения всяких там <…> Александров Македонских в абсолютном цифровом выражении больше, чем дата смерти. — Ну это же всё до нашей эры, понимаешь? Потому и считают наоборот. — Какой же может быть оборот во времени? — Условность такая, Антонина. От новой эры — плюс, до новой — минус. Ну, от рождения Христа. <…> девчонок она жалела <…> она чувствовала себя неизмеримо старше. Старше даже тех, кто годами обогнал её, будто время, которым измеряла она собственную жизнь, тоже считалось «наоборот», как до нашей эры»why the date of birth of any <…> Alexanders Macedonians used to be in absolute numeric expression more than the date of birth. ‒ But all this takes place before our era, do you understand? Which is why it’s counted otherwise. ‒ How could it be otherwise in time?It’s such a convention, Antonina. From the new era we have plus, down to the new era it’s minus. Well, from the Christ’s birth, <…> she had a pity for girls <…> as she considered herself to be much older. Older than even those who overcame her in years as if the time she measured her own life with, was also calculated “otherwiseas before our era») [7. S. 163—164].

it’s worth mentioning here the following fact: the wall clock at Boris Vasiliev home also worked otherwise which was remembered by V. Glebov, who was often his guest: «Главным объектом внимания в прихожей были часы <…> Не стоило бы о них и вспоминать, если бы они не шли вспять, супротив времени! Стрелки на них двигались противосолонь, то есть справа налево»In the entrance hall, the main attraction was the clock <…> It wasn’t worth remembering that, if they weren’t working otherwise, against the time! The clock hands moved anticlockwise, i.e. from right to left») [9. S. 27].

in course of perceiving the text, it’s important to form a positive attitude both to the national and world culture by means of language as a cognitive mechanism to represent the codifying of “language as the inner speech” [8]: with its clearness, expressiveness, meaningfulness and efficiency. As a consequence, a literary texts functions as the means to house the culture as a system of national values because it accumulates linguocultural information through symbols, Biblical motives and images, typical for the culture of a country. For example, Boris Vasiliev uses the “burning bush” Biblical image.

The concept of “the Burning bush” «in Russian linguoculture corresponds to the mythological items of the reality. According to N.F. Alefirenko, in the background of myths, «there lies the archetype, or the stable image which is permanently actualized in the consciousness of every member of the given linguistic community while also having ethnocultural value» [1. S. 210]. By means of the precedential phenomenon, Boris Vasiliev implicitly identifies the main heroin with the Phoenix Bird which as a burning, but not burnt bullace bush, revives from the ashes, and thus the author uses not only national, but also common cultural archetypes demonstrating those as linguocultural markers of literary texts.

it’s just the meaningful interpretation that helps understand a literary text, as «the text meaningful structure is formed on the basis of extremely complex and multi-aspect (contact, distant, associative-and semantic, logic, grammatical, etc.) links and relations of all elements, above all, lexical ones which are creatively interpreted by readers» [5. S. 187].

Literary texts by Boris Lvovich Vasiliev teach and educate us, they function as the means to render extralinguistic data on the history and traditions of the Russian people, and as well as the object to describe linguistic realia, and the literary text itself, according to N.S. Bolotov, «is absorbed into the cultural space of the epoch; it reflects peculiarities of the author’s personality, its knowledge, lexicon, worldview, proper goals and motifs. Therefore, the text itself carries the imprint of the culture of a certain stage in the history of a society, culture of a certain nation with its traditions, background and mentality» [5. S. 230].

We’d remark the importance of educational role and influencing function of B. Vasiliev’s literary texts: «in his books, one can always find significant social ideas which don’t let readers stay indifferent <…> they are: love, hatred, friendship, his civil grounds and patriotic spirit. The content of his writings is always multiplaned, and at the same time, it’s clear to understand ‒ the writer calls to conserve in a man his historic and national roots and traditions, his moral qualities, inherited from the ancestors; he speaks for the careful and respectful attitude to one another, to a woman as the symbol of life on the earth, to the earth itself which needs protection and help» [18. S. 236—237].

To preview communicative fallacy in course of perceiving the text, one has to remember that besides the background knowledge, the aesthetic, sensory text perception seems significant as well, it’s determined by the national and cultural universals while «feeling (‘чувство’) being an authentically Russian word, demonstrates the spiritual nature of the author’s thought» [11. S. 136].

American linguist D.H. Haims introduces the term “communicative competence” and proves the necessity to teach situational practice, the speech models in course of socialization, cognitive and emotional behavior, while literary texts used to be the educational ground. The competence is understood as the ability to acquire language as strategies and tactics to master extralinguistic factors. The relevance of an utterance or sentence determining the choice of situational speech acts, is governed by the system of mental and speech acts and the communicative role of a speaker: «… whatever information of speech besides the rules of grammar and lexicon, are acquired in course of the transformation into the competent, plenipotentiary member of the given linguistic community» [17. S. 42].

To develop the communicative competence and overcome language barrier helps the use of linguocultural paradigms in course of working with literary texts, and revealing their stylistic potential and linguistic empathy. For example, the narrative empathy concept, the search for the truth, justice, human dignity, the opposition of good and evil, Biblical motifs let associate B.L. Vasiliev’s creative work with L.N. Tolstoy, and, in turn, his literary works with M. Cervantes and Ch. Dickens.

B.L. Vasiliev is the follower of classical writers, he continues their traditions: «Истина была в Добре. Весь опыт прошлого требовал прямого пути к нему <…> Лев Николаевич из всей мировой литературы выше всего ставил Чарльза Диккенса <…> Добро — высшая идея, движущая сила и смысл всей жизни героев Диккенса в наиболее чистом виде, и эта чистота помыслов о Добре была для Льва Николаевича идеальным примером великого долга Литературы перед человеком»The Truth was in the Good. The whole experience of the past demanded to go the direct way to it. <…> Of all the world literature, Lev Nikolayevich put Charles Dickens beyond anyone else <…> The Good is the highest idea, the driving force and essence of the entire lives of Dickens’s characters in the purest form, and as for Lev Nikolayevich, this purity of thought about the Good was the ideal example of the Literature great duty before a man») [6. S. 18—19].

The main heroine of B. Vasiliev’s story writes down her memoirs about the war she survived, so that she tells modern children about unhuman horrors, hardships and sorrows which were brought by that bloodshed, and at the same time, she strives to make out all the truth as it is, without any bright colors, about heroism, duty, sacrifice of millions of people, which is why Tonya repeatedly and mercilessly, and asking questions, rewrites the notebook pages: «…сейчас ей было не по себе от их (детей) послушного молчания <…> дело было в скрытом недоверии к подвигам <…> Почему? <…> А потому что перекормили <…> Исчезла искренность подвига, его порыв, боль, цена — и осталось голое перечисление. Остался реестр, длинный и нудный списочный перечень: кто, что, где и когда <…> Герасим утопил собачку, и полтораста лет рыдают над нею потрясённые дети, а мы без конца толкуем о двадцати миллионах погибших — и встречаем отсутствующие глаза. А они должны гореть и страдать, иначе и за перо браться не стоит…» («…and now she felt ill at ease because of their (children’s) obediently kept silence <…> the thing lied in the hidden disbelief in the deeds <…> Why? <…> And just because they were overfed <…> The sincerity of the deed disappeared, its impulse, pain, value ‒ just bare enumeration left. There left behind the register, long and tedious list-register: who, what, where and when <…> Gerasim drowned a little dog, and one hundred and a half years our shocked children are crying over it, and we are endlessly talking about the twenty million dead ‒ meeting the vacant eye. And they should burn and suffer, otherwise you shouldn’t take s pen and write») [7. S. 220].

Alongside with the communicative function of speech activity, by means of emotional background, there are formed ethic, aesthetic and educative functions which are realized in course of the work with literary texts. in the beginning of the story, the main heroine Tonya appears before a reader as a tough young girl, cursing intelligentsia and education, who doesn’t want to study, but in the end of her lifetime, she, having made a school director, has transformed: «Теперь она думала о том, что гнев не даёт и не может давать радости, ибо он обладает не созидательной, а лишь разрушительной энергией»Now she was thinking that the wrath doesn’t and can’t bring joy, as it has got not creative, but just a destructing energy») [7. S. 220].

Tackling the issues of the significance of “comparative literature studies”, A. Gnisci emphasizes the importance of the practical approach to literary text studies, where the language of a literary text is a system of artistic thought and aesthetic mastering of the worldview [19].

it’s worth remarking that the national and cultural character of Boris Vasiliev literary texts is determined by value-and-meaning content of the author’s works, and aesthetic sensory perception of the content by means of emotive co-feeling of an addressee, because “a literary discourse is the wholesome product of speechand-thought activity of the two consciousnesses (creative and receptive ones), the virtual model of a generative text. The first consciousness belongs to the author of the Russian literary text providing his multi-aspect activity to embody the thought into the text, and the second one belongs to the perceiving subject (a reader, a listener or student) » [2. S. 254].

The aesthetic sensory perception «doesn’t appear just as the background of the narrative, but it demonstrates many-faceted processes reflecting the interior world of a man» [11. S. 133]. The emotive perception of a literary text activates thinking process, causes empathy, co-feeling, and due to the co-feeling means, there takes place the associative interaction with the one’s own life experience or spiritual experience of the one’s own nation. Emotions stimulate psychic regulation depending on the meaningful organization of the idea of the text put forward and serve to develop the communicative competence: «While studying literary narratives, the unity of communicative and educative goals is most vividly seen as a man is used to express the feelings which are able to motivate, organize and direct the perception, the thinking and action <…> being necessary not only to acquire knowledge, but to experience and feel the events of a narrative. To follow a hero (a character) till the end of the route because this route touches soul strings, embodies co-feeling, “trains” heart, protect it from toughness and indifference» [15. S. 181—182].

Conclusion

To sum up consequently, linguocultural dominants of the literary texts by Boris Vasiliev generate the ability of emotional response to the author’s ideas of the text. This ability is developing in course of forming spiritual and moral qualities and feelings. Literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev influence the feelings and experiences of a reader, they possess the topics of spiritual and moral orientation, humanistic attitude to a man, co-feeling, dignity, preservation of traditions and family, the necessity of education and study.

in the book «Boris Vasiliev in the memoirs of his contemporaries», D. Bykov remembers: «Знаете, что интересно: Васильеву на полях его рукописей Борис Полевой рисовал «22». В терминологии Полевого «22» означал перебор — стилистический, эмоциональный…» («You know, what’s interesting: in the margins of Boris Vasiliev’s manuscript, Boris Polevoy draw “22”. In the terminology of Polevoy, “22” meant overrun ‒ stylistic, emotional…») [9. S. 11].

Dialogue is the consensus of worldviews and cultural experience: personal, ethic, national. The dialogue of cultures basing on the principles of openness (readiness to interaction), process (development in time ‒ succession of generations), symmetry (equal rights and personal freedom) observes the conditions that could be realized under linguocultural factors as is seen in course of studying B.L. Vasiliev’s literary texts.

A literary text tackling the issues of general human values activates culturally significant meanings which represent the linguocultural essence through an imaginative word.

 

1 Here and on, he original text fragment in Russian is followed by a literary translation into English.

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About the authors

Evgenia S. Kazyutina

Belgorod University of Cooperation, Economics and Law

Author for correspondence.
Email: eukaziutina@yandex.ru

teacher of the Russian Language and Business Communications Department

116a, Sadovaya Str., Belgorod, Russian Federation, 308023

Elena G. Ozerova

Belgorod State National Research University

Email: ozerova@bsu.edu.ru

Dr. in Philology, Assistant-Professor, Professor of the Russian Language and Russian Literature Department

85, Pobedy Str., Belgorod, Russian Federation, 308015

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