The Play of Words / Representations / Meanings

Abstract

This article introduses proceedings of the international scientific conference “Puns, Neologisms, Reservations, and Shifts in Russian Culture in the 18th–20th Centuries,” held at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. Petersburg State University on November 27–28, 2020. It took place in the interval between the first and the second wave of the pandemic, when the very possibility of a face-to-face meeting of speakers seemed unique. The article opens with a description of the specifics of the mixed format in which the conference took place, and then reconstructs the discussion among its participants, which greatly expanded the scope of the research of the problem. While the initial intention was to focus on Russian culture, limiting the discussion to the period between the reforms of Peter the Great and the present, as the discussion unfolded, it became clear to the participants that there is no Russian specificity in this project. On the contrary, it is much more interesting and relevant in a broader, sociocultural context. As for the timeframes, they were removed in order to provide an opportunity to talk about the play of words and images, having the opportunity to resort to broad and quite unexpected comparisons and analogies. Philologists, philosophers, cultural anthropologists, historians, art historians, specialists in visual studies, history and theory of fashion saw in comparative typology a common ground for dialogue in which it was possible to talk about the practices of word and image play, namely puns, neologisms, communication disorders and shifts. We were able to distinguish three conceptual fields in which the polemic unfolded: the play of words, the play of representations, and the play of meanings.