Qualitative and Quantitative Characteristics of Functional-and-Stylistic and Emotional-Expressive Stylistic Markedness of the Adjective in the Literary Text: Based on V.M. Shukshin’s Stories

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Introduction

At the turn of the 20^th–21^st centuries — the time of the socio-political, economic and cultural transformations — the typical process of emerging “literature-oriented, bookish” words of colloquial speech intensifies, which is accompanied by the interaction of language and speech styles as well as the broadening and narrowing, the disappearing and acquiring of new meanings, the formation of new derivatives from the borrowings, and so on. All of those novelties are reflected in the standard, normative and similar dictionaries, and they are realized in literary texts in static dictionary and dynamic speech situations with the introduction of individual (author’s) innovations in the semantic and stylistic content of linguistic units.

In the given language and speech process, Adjectives are regularly functioning to denote a feature. Adjectives are a syntagmatically active, multi-functional stylistically complex part of speech. Stylistic characteristics of the Adjectives are not similarly identified at various levels of linguistic hierarchy, though adjectives function on various levels of language. In lexis, word-derivation and syntax, there is marked the major part of new derivatives and semantic varieties of stylistic nuances and meanings of a linguistic unit.

At present, the dynamic evolution of the stylistic theory, the intensive studies of language and speech styles, their expressive potentials attract the attention of linguists to the content and structure of a text. It results in the angle of differentiation of the main notions both in linguistic and literature studies, e.g., literary language and language of belle-lettres (fiction).

Many scholars have been studying the language of V.M. Shukshin [1–3]. They turned to various aspects of Shukshin’s language-and-speech. This study reviews the peculiarities of stylistic evaluation of Adjective comparing static (dictionary) and dynamic (speech) characteristics which could have and do have essential differences both in qualitative and quantitative aspects. To validate and strengthen scientific objectivity of the research findings the linguo-statistical analysis of stylistic nuances was applied and carried out on the linguistic materials which means both theoretical and applied linguistic significance.

For example, let’s discuss the sentence “Как вам не стыдно? — с убийственным спокойствием спросил профессор и стал ждать ответа” — (lit.: ‘Are you not ashamed? — asked the Professor with a murderous calmness, and started to wait for an answer’ (V. Shukshin. “The Exam”)).¹ The word murderous acquires the new meaning of ‘непоколебимый, равнодушный, холодный – impregnable/firm, indifferent, frostbitten’, and the word collocation ‘убийственное спокойствие – ‘murderous calmness’ makes a semantic antonym and has got a colloquial nuance because it’s just while speaking or author’s use of a noun and adjective the latter gets a new stylistic evaluation (a nuance of disapproval and mockery). Such stylistic nuance is not labelled in explanatory dictionaries, i.e., it’s contextual and individual to the author.

We’ve chosen literary texts for the analysis — stories by V.M. Shukshin (collection of stories “Там, вдали” (lit: ‘There, in the Distance’), some explanatory Russian dictionaries².

The analysis of the study materials is carried out following the parameters mentioned below:

1. realization of normative stylistic labels of the Adjective and their meanings in literary (fiction) texts;
2. factual number of adjectives in the analyzed literary (fiction) texts;
3. the ratio of the types of stylistic nuances of the Adjective in explanatory dictionaries and in literary (fiction) texts;
4. author’s individual use of the Adjective in V. Shukshin’s literary (fiction) texts.

In the course of the linguo-statistical analysis of the data in literary (fiction) texts we used the method of continuous sampling, i.e., we collected, identified and analyzed stylistically marked adjectives of V. Shukshin’s stories.

Each fiction work testifies not only to the general linguistic style, but also on the individual author’s style, on the artistic skills of the author’s sampling of stylistic expressive means, which at most depends on the genre, theme, author’s artistic idea and plot, on the content of a literary (fiction) text. In his stories, V.M. Shukshin uses rather a great number of colloquial artistic means that’s why his prose often tends towards colloquial style. In his stories, there are used a lot of dialectal words, neologisms, slang words, colloquial expressions, etc. Dealing with the issue — the issue of the literary text language, V.V. Vinogradov marked that to apply the colloquial style in the literary stories any author could use two types of linguistic means: 1 — borrowings from colloquial speech; 2 — word formation according to productive types of word-derivation characteristic of oral, colloquial speech [4. Р. 79]. It refers to all linguistic units used by the author, and in particular, to Adjective lexis, which is picturesque, imagery from the start and freely combines with lexemes of other parts of speech, primarily with the Noun.

The goal of the study is the analysis and description to present the stylistic nuances of the Adjective in explanatory Russian dictionaries and literary texts based on the material of V.M. Shukshin’s stories with foregrounding both static and dynamic features of a linguistic unit under the condition of dominating dialectal speech of the stories’ characters. In connection with the said above, the tasks of the study are to reveal and describe differences of various presentations of the stylistically marked adjectives in dictionaries and literary texts; to reveal and describe similarities and differences in the normative literary and dialectal meanings and the stylistic nuances of the Adjective; to reveal and describe the author’s individual stylistic nuances of the Adjective on the background of the normative and dialectal lexis; to analyze and describe the linguostatistical characteristics of the Adjective stylistic markedness in literary texts. The results of the accomplished scientific research are significant both for the linguistic theory on the whole and particularly for Russian linguistics, as well as for linguo-didactics and teaching techniques, which explain the relevance of the scientific issue under the study.

In the literary text, any adjective possessing functional-and-stylistic or emotional and expressive stylistic nuances depending on the environment, on social and language planes is interpreted from the stylistic point of view and linguostatistical evolution which depend on the author’s plot, on the influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, on social status and origins, on educational levels and professions, on the topic of talks, on sex and emotional state and so on, both of the author and characters of the story. In this context, V.M. Shukshin’s creative work, the language and speech of his works are unique and interesting not only in terms of stylistic functions of Adjective lexis, but on the whole in the general linguistic and definite linguistic aspects.

Peculiarities of functioning of stylistically marked adjectives in V.M. Shukshin’s stories in qualitative and quantitative interpretation

The linguistic materials under the study are the texts of V.M. Shukshin’s stories from the collection of stories «Там вдали» (lit.: ‘There, in the Distance’).³ The stylistic nuances of a linguistic units combine two types being functional-and-stylistic and emotional and expressive ones. Within each type, stylistic nuances of a given word are further divided into some forms, which together make up a poly-aspect language-and-speech phenomenon — the stylistic markedness (connotation) of a linguistic unit [5. Р. 87; 6. Р. 168; 7. Р. 21–231; 8; 9. Р. 432–433].

A number of researchers of V.M. Shukshin’s language consider his prose “striving to be pronounced”. Thus, in V.M. Shukshin’s prose, S. Yurskij hears both modern speech and modern thinking [10. Р. 11–12], which is proved by his language and the speech of his characters and is deprived of affectation, abstruseness and histrionics. It’s the live Russian language of village dwellers, i.e., the Russian village language-speech. For instance, in the V.M. Shukshin’s story “Критики” (lit.: ‘Critics’) there’s a phrase “Нервная система — это же его учение” (lit.: The nervous system is his teaching”). In this context the adjective нервный (‘nervous’) could have a label of “мед.” (‘medical’) or “научн.” (‘scientific, academic’), because the collocations are used in the field of medicine as an academic term and the text fragment is characterized by the functional style of the sphere. But in the explanatory dictionary of S.I. Ozhegov and N.Yu. Shvedova, the adjective also has got some other (direct and figurative) meanings, stylistic nuance and a corresponding dictionary label.⁴ In this case, the stylistic marker of the dictionary and in V.M. Shukshin’s text coincide in one stylistic label (bookish), but doesn’t coincide in the neutral or colloquial labels.

Let’s get down to another context using the same word нервный (‘nervous’): Дед был сухой и нервный и страдал глухотой («Критики») — “The grandfather was lean and nervous and suffered from the deafness” (lit.). In this case the adjective нервный (‘nervous’) acquires the colloquial nuance and means «возбуждённый, раздражённый» — ‘agitated, irritated’. In the SOSh dictionary the adjective with such meaning has got the stylistic label of “colloq.”, which coincides with its contextual stylistic nuance in the text fragment.

V.M. Shukshin’s language is simple and clear. Alongside the normative literary colloquial lexemes it uses dialectal and slangy words. See the description of the Kandaurova’s husband in the story “Письмо” (‘The Letter’) Муж её, Кандауров Иван, был мужик работящий, честный, но бука несусветная (lit.: ‘Her husband Ivan Kandaurov was a hard-working man, honest, but a sheer bugaboo’). The adjective несусветная (‘sheer’) has got a colloquial stylistic nuance, and in the SOSh dictionary is marked with the label “colloq.”, but in the given context the word’s semantic-and-stylistic aspect is intensified in the collocation with the words бука (‘bugaboo’) and мужик работящий, честный. (a hard-working, honest man’). Stylistic nuance of the word is positive, favourable, and the foregrounding has a positive nuance of meaning of ‘exuberant, restless”, “starting everything new, and as a rule successfully accomplishing it” (about the theory of foregrounding see: [11]).

In selecting stylistic means for a literary text a significant is played not only linguistic, but also extra-linguistic factors as to the author or his characters. The influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors leads to the fact that V.M. Shukshin endows his characters with a dialectal lexis, as the events used to take place mainly in the village, among the village dwellers, for example, “Домой Чудик приехал, когда шёл рясный, парной дождик» («Чудик»)” (lit.: ‘Chudik⁵ came back home when heavy fresh rain was falling down’ (“Chudik”)). Both within and outside this context meaning of the Russian adjective рясный is not clear because it could be misunderstood and perceived like «сильный, частый, грибной, тёплый, с градом» (lit.: ‘heavy, showery, mushroom rain, warm, with hail’, etc. In Dahl’s dictionary (SD) the adjective means «обильный, крупный (lit.: ‘heavy, thick’)”⁶.

Thus, in our opinion, the context should be interpreted through the meaning of что Чудик домой приехал, когда шёл обильный крупный дождь, то есть когда лил сильный, льющийся как из ведра дождь (lit.: ‘Chudik came back home when heavy rain was falling down in showers, i.e., it was pouring with rain; it was raining cats and dogs’). The word Chudik (it’s the name of the character) has a contemptuous, pejorative, and at the same time positive (funny, joyful) meaning. The combination of a heavy, showery non-stop rain and the meaning of the word Chudik (having a diminutive-hypocorist suffix) denoting an eccentric, unusual, not up to the standard man making unexpected queer actions which have a nuance of meaning of a very small man of little and big odds, in the fragment of the context it forms the hyperbolic meaning. Proceeding from the meaning of “обильный, крупный (рясный)” in Russian as well as “very small, worthless” (Chudik) the general contextual meaning of something magnified, beyond the norm, bulky arouses, because the diminutive-hypocorist, pejorative (Chudik) also means the enforcement, but in the opposite way. In such a horrible weather it’s only Chudik who could walk and ride.

Another example: “Он маленько заполошный – как бы не сделал чего над собой” («Материнское сердце») (lit.: ‘He is a little fidgety ‒ hope, he wouldn’t do anything bad to himself’ (“Mother’s Heart”)). In this context the word заполошный (‘fidgety’) is used. In the SD dictionary it has the following interpretation “ветреный, опрометчивый, безрассудный, взбалмошный, … (‘featherbrained, hasty, reckless, extravagant…”)⁷. In the context the word means «ветреный, опрометчивый, безрассудный, взбалмошный, … (‘featherbrained, hasty, reckless, extravagant…’)”⁸, and further on, is said “…«…как бы ни сделал чего над собой» (hope he wouldn’t do anything bad to himself’). So, the dictionary and context meanings do not absolutely coincide. V.M. Shukshin gives to the word another meaning, another stylistic nuance. It’s also probable that this very semantic-and-stylistic meaning exists in the Altai dialect. So, V.M. Shukshin “didn’t create” a new meaning or stylistic nuance, but used those existing in the live speech of the Altai dialect bearers.

It’s worth mentioning the use of the dialectal word чалдонский[9]: Щиблетов не стал дожидаться, пока они своими чалдонскими мозгами сообразят, что ответить, скрипуче повернулся, кашлянул в кулак и пошёл в кабину («Ораторский приём») – (lit.: ‘Schibletov hasn’t waited any longer, when they understand with their Chaldons’ brains what to answer, and turned with a squeak, coughed into the fist and went to the box’ (“Orator’s means’)). The word isn’t registered in V. Dahl’s dictionary (SD), but from the context fragment is clear what the author had on his mind under this word: the word presents to us the meaning of ‘heavy-minded, slow-witted’. It’s most likely the word is a kind of author’s occasional or dialectal one derived from the word Chaldon. But if a dialectal word and other word of “local origins” having local dialectal meanings are not registered in a dictionary it doesn’t mean that it must be individually author’s word invention. It could be a dialectal word which wasn’t registered ether by lexicographers or the literary texts creators. Nevertheless, V.M. Shukshin is the “pathbreaker” of the word using it in the literary text which is read and analyzed by a man.

Adjectives have such specific properties as mobility, semantic flexibility which finally characterize it with adaptability to the Nouns, the verbs and their semantics. In such word collocations with the adjectives of functional-and-stylistic or emotional and expressive nuances one are observable semantic and stylistic shifts.

In V.M. Shukshin’s stories the specifics of using stylistically marked linguistic means are revealed at various linguistic levels because the stylistics is the inter-level (over-level) discipline.

Characters’ oral speech (at the phonetic level) is attractive due to “village” dialectal pronunciation, intonation with typical facial expressions and gestures, and the body positioning which show this or that stylistic nuances of their language.

The example: “А этот вчерашной ночью вздремнул маленько, вижу: ты вроде идёшь по ограде, яички в сите несёшь” («Горе»). (lit.: ‘And last night, that one had a nap for a while, and I see: you are as if walking on the fence and carrying the eggs in the sieve’ (“Sorrow”)). The adjective вчерашной (‘yesterday’s’, ‘last night’) is rendered with the sound [o] which is typical for the village dwellers, literary variation is вчерашн[е]й with the sound [e].

The pronunciation with double [tt] of the word это(этто) combining with non-normative pronunciation of the Russian adjective вчерашний like [вчерашной] establishes the dialectal speech without observing literary norms and stylistically colloquial speech (этто, вчерашной). This dialogue by the old man takes place at the moment when he tries to overcome the death of his wife — “тихой, безответной старушки” (‘quiet, timid old woman’). Such non-normative speech could be influenced by some other (non-dialectal) reasons: no vigor to talk (senility), physiological reasons (being toothless), and it’s hard to speak, as he remembers his old woman and cries, and sobs because this could cause the faults in speech, wrong intonation and pronunciation.

Another example: “Оказалось, офицер у них чижалораненный, а им надо в другую сторону («Горе»). — (lit.: ‘The officer happened to be heavily wounded (in Russian — mispronounced чижалораненный), and they need to go the other way” “Sorrow”)). In this speech situation the sentence and the Adjective are said by the man who is a bit younger, the fellow villager, who is drunk. Sound combination [ti] is mispronounced as [chi]. It’s stipulated by social reasons: the environment, the emotional condition, dialect, education and others.

Another example is even more interesting: “А ей когда говорили, что она похожа на артистку какую-то, она прямо щастливая становилась» (Раскас). — (lit.: ‘And when she was told she looked like some actress, she had become really happy’ (“Raskas”). The character of the story Ivan Petin, who writes instead of Russian СЧ the letter Щ is 40 years old. At that moment he is in the a state of emotional intoxication because his wife left him with some other officer, and he decided to write a story about that event. He speaks correctly, but writes Russian СЧ instead of the letter Щ which suggests his illiteracy or inattentiveness. V.M. Shukshin shows this and other phonetic and pronunciation peculiarities not as a separate private situation, but as the phenomenon functioning among village dwellers who talk, think, write the way they used to do in that macro- or micro-social environment, which they think normative, usual, understandable for them. And nobody mocks them or is surprised by their dialectal pronunciation and spelling because they are in their native environment of speaking, communicating and on the whole, life activity.

On the word-derivational level there are quite many examples of linguistic units with stylistic nuances. Shukshin’s characters use there the whole spectrum of derivational elements which have the colloquial substandard stylistic nuances. Thus, in stories’ texts there function the following Russian adjective suffixes of the functional-and-stylistic and emotional and expressive stylistic nuances, e.g., -яц-, -ец-: бедняцкий, простецкий; -еньк-, -оньк-: стройненькая, махонькая; -ск-: бабский; -чив-, -лив-: улыбчивый, говорливый; -аст-, -ист-: грабастый, загогулистый; -ат-: носатый; -ящ-: работящий.

In the story “Chudik” the author uses the adjective зубовный (‘toothed’): “Наконец толчок, и всех начинает так швырять, что послышался зубовный стук и скрежет («Чудик»). — (lit.: ‘Finally, the bump, and everybody is so much slammed that the tooth bump and grinding were heard’ (“Chudik”). This word is double-marked in the SOSh dictionary with the labels “archaic” and “bookish” meaning ‘wild rage, fury’. The Noun grinding doesn’t fully combine with the adjectives зубной, зубатый, зубастый. (‘dental, toothed, sharp-toothed’), Here the author wants to show us the eccentricity of his character who would like to exaggerate the situation. The word form зубовный is used as the dialectal-and-colloquial variation instead of the normative neutral зубной. It acquires the colloquial substandard stylistic nuance. The use of such word variation deepens the meaningful volume of the Russian words стук and скрежет, as well as the meaningful volumes of the notions of зуб, зубной (‘tooth, toothed’), because the Russian suffix and inflexion (-овный) add the meaningful nuance of «большой, сильный, громкий, очень громкий» (‘big, strong, loud, very loud’), and at the same time, ‘not really pleasant, squeaky’, i.e., on the whole, the word and word collocation (зубовный стук и скрежет) involves the hyperbole not only due to the meaning of the word зубовный, but also due to the meanings of Russian words стук, скрежет, as teeth can’t make a loud bumping and loud grinding. The context fragment is hyperbolized and acquires imagery and the corresponding stylistic markedness. Such hyperbolizing is supported by the meanings of the precedent words and word collocations (наконец, толчок, и всех начинает так швырять). All those imply the meaning of deepening.

In the context “Редкостный, чудный покой слетел на него: он как будто куда-то плыл, повинуясь спокойному, мощному току времени” (“Беспалый”). — (lit.: ‘Rare, uncommon and so wonderful calm came upon him: as if he were sailing somewhere subordinate to the calm powerful flow of time’ (lit.: “Toeless”). The Russian adjective редкостный is derived from the abstract Russian noun редкостность. In the SOSh dictionary the word isn’t stylistically marked. But this word and its derivatives could be included in the group of historic or archaic words and attribute the stylistic label of “archaic” because in the modern Russian language its normative and highly frequent variation is редкий In the context, in our opinion, the Russian word редкостный is used as a stylistic device to demonstrate the emotional state of the character which he gets thanks to the rare wonderful calm meaning ‘deep strong calm’, and, consequently, the feeling that something has come upon him (easily, airy, freely) as if because of this it seems to him that the calm is sweeping and also possibly, he himself is sweeping. The general stylistic nuance of the sentence is non-colloquial, non substandard, but imagery-artistic (редкостный; чудной; чудной покой; слетел на него; как будто куда-то плыл, повинуясь спокойному, мощному току времени). All word collocations tend to affirm the deepening of the semantic-and-stylistic volume of meanings, also the stylistic nuances, the use of the Russian adjective редкостный. And as if so, редкостный (‘rare’), then also чудный (‘wonderful’) are similar. This use observes the word collocation of (редкостный, чудный), which strengthens the stylistic markedness of the entire sentence, although in the SOSh dictionary the word редкостность is registered as neutral, and its derivative редкостный, in our opinion, is labelled as stylistically colloquial.

Among the Russian prefixes, the most productive in V.M. Shukshin’s prose we’d mention the following: по-, не-, без-, рас-, недо-: побойчей, пострашней, распаренный, недопитый etc. The use of such adjective prefixes is typical for the colloquial nuance of speech.

V.M. Shukshin also uses complex compound Russian adjectives, e.g., черноглазая, великовозрастный, миловидный, and as well, adjective derivatives of the acronyms, e.g., Russian СельПО — сельповский. It happens due to many reasons including the author’s plot to render the peculiarities of the village speech.

Observing V.M. Shukshin’s stories in the stylistic-and-syntactic aspect, we see the use of simple sentences, complex sentences with inserted constructions, addressing, where stylistically marked adjectives are functioning. We also could observe the frequent use of incomplete and Infinitive sentences.

Syntactically the language of V.M. Shukshin’s stories is rather simple. It doesn’t look like the language of F.M. Dostoevsky’s or L.N. Tolstoy’s novels where there are often use complex sentences with a chain of subordinate clauses. To express the village environment, in his stories V.M. Shukshin uses such syntactic devices as inversion, comparisons and words with the stylistically substandard, pejorative nuances¹⁰, e.g.:

1. Утро раскинулось ясное, умытое, тихое (‘clear, clean, calm”) (Дядя Ермолай).
2. Куда летом ездишь? В Гагры вшивые (‘lousy’)? (Два письма).
3. Катенька, доченька, видела я этой ночий худой (‘bad’) сон (Письмо).
4. Говорил мужикам про такие поганые (‘rotten’) подробности, каких со зла не выдумаешь (Версия).
5. Самый натуральный (‘natural’) поп — с волосьями (Верую!).
6. Атомный (‘atomic’) век, мля, — должна быть скорость (Петька Краснов рассказывает).
7. Черти драные (‘ragged’) Тут ли счас не жить! — думает он и вылезает на свет белый (Космос, нервная система и шмат сала).
8. Мучительная (‘torturing’) слабость навалилась… (Как помирал старик).
9. Здоровье у него неважное (‘non-perfect’) (Письмо).
10. Потные, непотные (‘sweaty or non-sweaty’) — лезете под машину, на сырую землю спиной (Петька Краснов рассказывает).
11. — Дома. Голые (‘naked’) ходят (Хахаль).
12. Вы заметили: я суетился сейчас, как неловкий (‘awkward’) жених? (Экзамен).
13. И получится такое … мировое (‘global’) человечество (Космос, нервная система и шмат сала).
14. Вот это был — руководитель. Врождённый (‘in-born’) (Наказ).
15. Э—э, друг ситный (‘devoted’), да ты что?! (Беспалый).

In the stories, characters’ speech is rich in phraseological units. Thus, the characters often use Russian phraseology of the colloquial style which includes the Adjective, e.g., змея подколодная, казанская сирота, друг ситный, крокодиловы слёзы. And using substandard and abusive, pejorative words and word collocations with adjectives (курва старая, черти полосатые and others) adds the V.M. Shukshin’s texts even more colloquial and substandard nuances.

The abovementioned examples of texts’ fragments and the analysis of the used adjectives with stylistic markedness give the evidence of unique originality of V.M. Shukshin’s individual style as a verbal artist and the value of the Adjective lexis in forming his writer’s mastership.

V.M. Shukshin’s characters are ordinary village dwellers of different quality of life, education and professions, various social status, gender, mood and temperament, age, who sustain among themselves many types of relations. These social factors influence their speech, activities, thoughts and worldviews of the work characters. Translation of these various relations allows the author to show the transformation of their psychological and emotional status, their spiritual potential in the village life. All these are ordinary everyday situations: the village dwellers’ speech in court, Ivan’s meeting with the town’s administrator, the monologue of the essence of a man and his life, the dialogue with the priest, who “doesn’t neglect anything non-divine” and so on.

All this reveals national-and cultural, aesthetical, and, in general, spiritual depth of the Russian village life.

The population with the Russian soul keeps inviolate its traditions, thrift, family happiness, wealth and beauty of nature. The writer depicts the characters who live in a real environment, in the objective world. They are mainly materialistic, realistic and humanistic people, who love their village, their earth, their nation; their speech is characterized by definiteness, smartness, great logic and independence, the will to get to everything with their own mind.

The analysis of V.M. Shukshin’s characters’ language, the description of their behavior and psychology, speech situations testify the abundance and expressiveness of V.M. Shukshin’s stories. His stories could be classified into some groups: story of the fate, story of the behaviour, story-confession. It’s confirmed by themes and structure of his stories: one part of those is about the fate, about people’s life; another part is about the morals, behavior of a man, his way of thinking, his deeds, his worldview and world perception; the third part deals with the analysis of the spent life.

Some of V.M. Shukshin’s stories are autobiographical. Thus, the author carries out a dialogue with the event whatever happened with his participation. Uniting the single influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors on the writer and his characters we may make a conclusion that in the stories, characters’ language and speech and the narrator’s (writer’s) language is simple, open to the dialectal words of various types, substandard words, proverbs and the like, which mark the colloquial aspect of linguistic units. That is why the language of V.M. Shukshin’s stories is rich in imagery, emotions, expressiveness, the force of aesthetical influence, exact in judgement, and clear for readers.

The stories written in the “village” Russian language possess a bright imagery and the variety of stylistic nuances. A.N. Tolstoy dealing with the issue wrote, “Why is the folk language so fine and artistic? Because in the folk speech there always live and always function the laws of language’s origins” [12. Р. 96].

Functioning of the Adjective in V.M. Shukshin’s stories both in qualitative and quantitative planes has its own peculiarities, as the stylistic markedness of linguistic units of literary texts plays an important imagery-educational role according to the type of markedness and the writer’s frequency of the use and reflection in a literary text. In the text, a high-frequency adjective or the low-frequency one of stylistically marked adjective depends on the plot, artistic taste of a writer, so the quality and quantity of the stories are closely interconnected in solving the set tasks and reaching the goals which the author has put forward. To the greater extent, the quantity determines the quality and helps more exact, more voluminous depicting of the inner world of literary texts.

The statistical analysis supposes the text study using two methods — continuous and random sampling. Random observation of a text proposes the following means: 1) random sampling; 2) mechanical sampling; 3) series sampling; 4) typical sampling [13. Р. 221–222]. This kind of statistical study is of great importance “in the course of describing a writer’s language and studying the language of literary texts” [13. Р. 220–221].

The statistical analysis of the quantity of stylistically marked adjectives in V.M. Shukshin’s stories was made in absolute numbers and per cent in relation to the whole volume of words in the collection of stories (80 000); in relation to the whole quantity of adjectives in the collection of stories (5817); in relation to the whole quantity of stylistically marked adjectives in the collection of stories (1336). We didn’t differentiate into types the functional-and-stylistic nuances, but combined all types of stylistic nuances into a single class.

The studied linguistic materials concerning the stylistics of adjectives consist of forty-eight (48) V.M. Shukshin’s stories. The number of words in them makes about 80.000. Each separately analyzed story implies 1600/1400 linguistic units (words). In each of V.M. Shukshin’s story there were used from 400 to 1000 adjectives. In the course of the analysis of the literary text there were chosen adjectives which express their functional-and-stylistic nuances (Table).

 Qualitative-and-Quantitative Characteristics of the Adjective Stylistic Markedeness of the V.M. Shukshin’s Texts (the collection of stories “There, in the Distance”. Vilnius: MOKLAS, 1986) 

The total of words in the collection of stories in absolute numbers and %	The total of adjectives in the collection of stories in absolute numbers and % in relation to the whole massive of words in it	The total of stylistically marked adjectives in absolute numbers and % in relation to the whole massive of words in the collection of stories	The total of stylistically marked adjectives in absolute numbers and % in relation to the whole massive of adjectives in the collection of stories
80 000 = 100%	5 817 = 72%	1336 = 1.9%	1336 = 22.6%

Source: composed by M. Dzhusupov and Sh.K. Mamirova.

Finally, the total of words in the collection of stories is 80 000, which makes 100%. Adjectives functioning in the texts of stories make 5 817. It makes 7.2% of the whole massive of words in the collection of stories and 100% of all the adjectives in it. Stylistically marked adjectives functioning in the texts of stories make 1336, which is 1.9% of the total number of words in the collection of stories and 22.6% of all the adjectives in the collection of stories. Therefore, on the whole the number of adjectives and stylistically marked adjectives in V.M. Shukshin’s literary text is rather big (5817), and among those there are 1336 stylistically marked ones. Such tells us that the writer’s literary texts are dense with the expression of quality concerning beauty, images, comparison, hyperbole, litotes, etc.) while rendering the specifics of characters in the text with foregrounding the Russian village word creation.

The majority of adjectives functioning in the stories are stylistically neutral. The Adjective lexis with stylistic markedness stands out on the background of neutral linguistic units which dominate in literary texts.

Adjectives (scientific terms) within word collocations like нервная система (‘nervous system’), атомный век (‘atomic age’), сивушное масло (‘raw vodka oil’), which are frequented in the text, are reconsidered. i.e., they are used in the figurative meaning, or there takes place the amplification of their semantics, and consequently, of their stylistic nuances. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate that in the stories, adjectives bear the colloquial nuance.

In the text, stylistic markedness of adjectives often coincides with their stylistic markedness in the Russian explanatory dictionaries. For example: Russian словоохотливая, давнишний, загогулистое, распаренный, грабастый, аппетитная (about a woman with attractive face and figure), бабский, бедняцкий, шикарный, вшивый (meaning ‘boring, annoying’), пышный (‘bulky, fat, of large size’), поганый, драный, etc.

In the speech of V.M. Shukshin’s characters a few adjectives acquire colloquial or substandard nuances depending on the utterance’s content, their syntactic placement and function, lexical surroundings and so on. For example, in the Russian sentence: Посмотрел минут пять на телевизорную мельтешню и заявил: — Хреновина. Due to the substandard lexical-and-semantic environment, the neutral nuance of the adjective телевизорный receives the substandard nuance like the Russian words мельтешня, хреновина with their substandard and rude nuances, and in the explanatory dictionary they are labelled as “substandard”. Thus, an adjective quickly and easily subdues to the hardly observed but essential meaningful and stylistic variations in combination with the Noun. For example, in the Russian sentence: Если они рекламируют пиво, то на вывеске обязательно давай счастливое рыло (Пьедестал/the story “Pedestal”). In the SoSh dictionary, the word рыло is labelled “substandard, and the adjective счастливое has got no stylistic label. However, in combination with the substandard noun the word gets a substandard nuance, i.e., it’s charged with a substandard nuance and carries in itself the meaning of cursing, blaming and is used in the word collocation as the means of expressing irony, mocking. In such cases, adjective’s stylistic markedness in the dictionary and literary text doesn’t coincide, which testifies to their individual author’s use in a literary speech.

V.M. Shukshin used in abundance both colloquial and substandard speech and adjectives with colloquial, substandard dialectal nuances and in his stories he showed the world perception of his characters. In V.M. Shukshin’s stories, characters’ colloquial speech gives the evidence of the author’s strife to make this speech available and understandable for everybody. That is why his artistic literary language is multi-meaningful, imagery a kind of assortment of various types of stylistic nuances. Therefore, Shukshin’s language is simple, “village”, plain, and consequently it’s typical of the writers of realistic and natural philosophical trends.

In Shukshin’s literary speech functional-and-stylistic and emotional expressive nuances of a linguistic unit on the whole and adjectives, in particular, quite often are integrated in a single whole because they can’t be, or almost can’t be differentiated. For example, the use of such Russian adjectives as бабский, вшивый, загуголистый, etc., on the one hand denotes the units of the colloquial and substandard substyle, and on the other hand, they are marked with the emotional and expressive nuances (either disrespect, depreciation, hyperbolizing, forbearance or pleasantry, and so on). So, a colloquial adjective used by the author in his stories in the stylistic aspect often presents a conglobulation (combination, a whole, class, compound) of stylistic nuances which amalgamate functional-and-stylistic and emotional expressive nuances. This phenomenon of V.M. Shukshin’s literary language-speech is connected with the village theme of his stories, and the village folk language is colloquial, integrating linguistic units of some functional styles as in the minds of village dwellers this is the single Russian language to be used due to the worldview and its reflection in speech without any necessary formal differentiation into styles and substyles.

In the context of a dialect there are formed the so-called psycho-images of sounds and their combinations which differ greatly from the linguistic literary norms, and because of this they present the sound form of the normative linguistic units in a dialectal pronunciation, in a dialectal lexical meaning accompanied with the corresponding stylistic nuances. Thus, in the conscience of a dialect bearer there take place the contact of a dialectal normative system and the literary linguistic norms, and, as a rule, in those life situations the norms of a dialectal speech” gain the victory”. So, if necessary to realize speech activity acts on the literary linguistic level the inner linguistic interference takes place under the influence of the dual negative impact [14] of dialectal and literary norms, which, as a rule, in linguistics and methodology to teach a language is considered to be a one-sided dialectal influence. A dialect is a socio-linguistic phenomenon within a language which is formed during centuries, and during centuries it functions in those social circumstances where its bearers are living.

The issue of the acquisition of the two linguistic systems by an individual and a society, both the inner core of one language (dialect and literary language) and two different languages has got a bilingual socio-linguistic character [15], which is formed under natural or artificial conditions (in a students’ auditorium) or like the combination of the two. As to teaching the literary language in dialectal environment, it’s similar to teaching a second (foreign) language.

V.M. Shukshin has demonstrated the phenomenon of “the fighting” between dialectal and literary norms of the Russian language in the speech of Altai dialect bearers as a natural language-speech of inner linguistic linguo-contrastive reality of the Russian language functioning in such socio-linguistic environment where the Russian dialectal speech of communicants is of much variety, rich, imagery, semantically and stylistically poly-aspect, and within its system the significant role is played by the stylistic markedness of adjectives.

For example: 1) Если хотите, меня интересует человек, русский человек, который не удосужился прочитать величайшее национальное произведение (“Экзамен”). — (lit.: ‘If you’d like, I’m interested in a man, a Russian man, who didn’t care to read the greatest national literary work (“The Exam”)’. As it seems, in the context the adjectives русский, величайшее, национальное, have a neutral stylistic nuance, only suffix -айш- attributes a high (bookish) nuance. But in the given moment, the speech belongs to the Professor during the exam for the students learning by correspondence. The main emphasis is done on the nationality of a young man — Russian — and he hasn’t read the very national text of “The Lay of the Igor’s Campaign”. In this context, the adjective is characterized by the stylistic nuance of indignation, disappointment and possibly shame for the people (here: students) are not proud of their national values, historical past of their nation. 2) На реке ветер похаживал добрый. Стегал и толкался… Канаты гудели. Но хоть выглянуло солнышко, и то хорошо. — (lit.: ‘On the river a strong wind was blowing. Beating and pushing. The ropes were booming. But the sun had come out, and that was fine’). In the context the Russian adjective добрый means ‘strong, stormy’ and it acquires the nuance of fright, self-awareness of the strong wind. And the author calms down himself telling the sun has come out. But the image of the stormy wind is symbolic, and the author describes the inner feeling of a man, his drama as if something bad has happened. In fact, the old man Philip became a witness of the burial of his first love, a beautiful Mary.

In the texts of literary works typical and atypical word collocations depend on objective (linguistic) and subjective (contextual) word meanings. For example: Неспокойно на душе, томительно. И думается в такие огромные, светлые, ядовитые ночи вольно, дерзко, сладко (“Горе”). — (lit.: ‘The soul isn’t calm, but lingering. And one is thinking free, boldly, and sweetly at such large, bright, poisonous nights (“Sorrow”)’. Unusual collocation ядовитые ночи is characteristic of V.M. Shukshin’s prose. In the context the adjective ядовитый combined with the noun ночь receives another meaning, and in the reader’s mind the idea arises that the adjective gets a new meaning of ‘disquiet, disturbing’ and the stylistic nuance with the shade of alarm, disappointment, pain for a small man.

The analysis of the statistical study has shown that in the literary text, the frequency of adjectives with emotional expressive nuances overcomes the frequency of the functional-and-stylistic nuances because the great part is fulfilled by extra-linguistic factors, the theme and idea of the literary work which helped V.M. Shukshin to use in abundance colloquial, substandard dialectal lexis with proper stylistic nuances in the unofficial speech situations of the dialect bearers — the village dwellers.

Conclusions

The stylistic markedness of adjectives registered in dictionaries and functioning in literary texts could or couldn’t coincide, which is explained with the dynamic character of the literary language and speech and its stylistic potential. The stylistic markedness of adjectives in dictionaries and literary texts coincides at most but with the existing difference which is essentially important both in literary texts and colloquial speech. In various dictionaries, the same adjective could be registered and labelled with different types of stylistic nuances which depends on the point of view and interpretation of dictionary composers, upholding various methodological fundamentals in the course of scientific research on the whole, and stylistic nuances of a linguistic unit, in particular.

In V.M. Shukshin’s linguo-statistics of the literary speech the Adjective functions with high frequency and reveals various types of stylistic nuances. The collection of stories “There, in the Distance” consists of 48 stories (80 000 words = 100%). Out of them, 5817 (7.2%) linguistic units are adjectives. There are 1336 stylistically marked adjectives that make 1.9% of the total massive of worfs in the collection of stories and 22.6% of the total number of adjectives in it. Therefore, almost a quarter of the adjectives of the texts is stylistically marked. Many of them are either innovations or contextually — situationally interpreted under the influence of the dialectal system norms. It strengthens the imagery and distinctiveness of the stories using the village dialectal speech dominating in that large socio-linguistic environment the characters live and work of V.M. Shukshin’s stories. Thus, the village dialectal Russian language of the stories;’ characters reflects the real functional language-speech, but not the one created artificially.

With the transposition of the Adjective stylistic markedness in the literary text (to compare with the dictionary stylistic labels) in a number of contexts its lexical meaning transforms which on the whole creates a new or relatively new volume or nuance of contextual meaning.

The author’s individual mastership in using adjectives (both stylistically neutral and marked) is based on the three components: 1) norms of the Russian literary language; 2) norms of the dialectal Russian language; 3) the author’s interpretation of stylistic markedness of a linguistic unit.

The two latter components expressed on the plane of the literary norm and form a unique literary text, the author’s individuality, which demonstrate the deep intellectual potential of the author, and the characters of the stories.

In the consciousness of dialect bearers there are already formed psycho-images of the dialectal language-speech standards and their paradigmatic and syntagmatic peculiarities keeping the speech generators in the Russian language environment which is depicted in the author’s writings in the original static and dynamic state that is presented in the study on the example of the analysis of the stylistic markedness of the Russian Adjective.

 

_{¹ Shukshin, V.M. (1986). There, in the Distance (stories). Vilnius: Mokslas. (In Russ.).}

_{² Kuznetsov, S.A. (2002). The large explanatory dictionary of the modern Russian language. Moscow: Norint. (In Russ.); Ozhegov, S.I., & Shvedova, N.Yu. (2000). Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language. Moscow: Az. (In Russ.); Evgen’eva, A.P. (1981–1984). Dictionary of the Russian language. (Vols. 1–4). Moscow: Russkii уazyk. (In Russ.); Dahl, V.I. (1991). Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. Moscow: Russian Language. (In Russ.).}

_{³ Shukshin, V.M. (1986). There, in the Distance (stories). Vilnius: Mokslas. (Russ.).}

_{⁴ Ozhegov, S.I., & Shvedova, N.Yu. (2000). Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language. Moscow: Az. (In Russ.).}

_{⁵ The name of the main character.}

_{⁶ Dahl, V.I. (1991). Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. Moscow: Russian Language. P. 126. (In Russ.).}

_{⁷ Ibid.}

_{⁸ Ibid.}

_{⁹ Chaldons – an ethnic local group in Siberia.}

_{¹⁰ All examples are in Russian so as not to diminish their expressiveness.}

About the authors

Mahanbet Dzhusupov

Uzbek State University of World Languages

Author for correspondence.
Email: mah.dzhusupov@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2934-2333
SPIN-code: 4302-8351

Dr.Sc. (Philology), Professor, Head of the Department of Modern Russian Language

G9 A Kichik halqa yuli Str., Tashkent, the Republic of Uzbekistan, 100170

Sharapat K. Mamirova

Central Asian Innovation University

Email: sarapatmamirova@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0615-1921

PhD, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Philology

80 Baytursynov Street, Shymkent, the Republic of Kazakhstan, 160000

References

Supplementary files