Russian dialect speech in conditions of synthesis of oral popular speech tradition with written speech culture elements (based on the speech of dialect-speaking Old Believers)

Abstract

. The peculiarities of a new stage in Russian traditional popular culture, dating from the first half of the 20th century, when many dialect speakers began to read and write, require to study the influence that is exerted on oral dialect communication by written speech. Today, in dialect speech, we need to distinguish the features originated from the oral character of this form of communication from the unwritten character of folk speech culture as a foundation of dialect communication, and from the inclusion of written components in the language consciousness of dialect speakers. The analysed material is the speech of dialect speaking Old Believers from the village Belogornoe in Saratov Oblast; the object of observation is the peculiarities of inclusion of written culture elements into the dialect speech; the main research method is the text-based analysis of dialect speech. Literate dialect speaking Old Believers’ speech is typically dialectal – by its phonetic and grammatical structure, its lexical specificity, its communicative organization, as well as from the point of view of verbalized features distinguishing the dialect speakers’ consciousness. At the same time, the informants’ speech represents a specific synthesis of oral dialect communication features with penetrating elements of bookish and written discourses, mainly religious one. The interaction of the dialect speech basis with other discursive elements can be seen in the lexical composition of dialect speaking Old Believers’ speech, in the manner of coping with the inclusions from other discourses, in the functioning of heterogeneous language units, as well as in the forms of linguistic reflection. While remaining basically dialectal with its non-functional variability as a distinguishing feature of dialectal communication, the speech of literate dialect speakers is characterized by some elements of linguistic means’ functional distribution and by the strengthening of meta-linguistic reflection. The authors conclude that changes in dialect communication, connected with the expansion of literacy among dialect speakers, have a variable character. They are determined by the source of literacy and by the circle of written texts constituting the communicative space of a dialect speaker. The peculiarities of synthesizing written culture with the Old Believers’ dialect speech are a variant of the general dynamics of folk speech tradition.