“Culture is you and me”

On November 29, 2015, at the International Book Fair Non/fiction, a presentation of Irina Levontina’s new book “What I’m Talking About” took place. took part in the discussion of the book Philologists Elena and Alexey Shmelev , writers Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Lev Rubinstein , and the author of the book . We are publishing a transcript of the event.

Elena Shmeleva: Hello, we are pleased to welcome you to the presentation of Irina Levontina’s book. I think that many people already know Irina’s work; this is her second popular book. I’m not talking about her scientific works, since Irina is the author and co-author of serious academic dictionaries and scientific publications on linguistics. Her book cannot be called exclusively popular science.

Popular science literature is the popularization of ideas already known to science. What scientists describe in complex words, science popularizers describe simply. And Irina has a slightly different genre. Because she writes about new phenomena in the Russian language, about what is happening to our language now. Very often, it is Irina’s articles that begin a certain topic in linguistics. She starts this topic in a fun, lively way, and then we, her colleagues, start thinking about it and writing scientific articles. But I won’t talk for long, I’ll give the floor to Irina herself.

Irina Levontina: Thank you! The release of a book is a big celebration for the author, even better than a birthday. Thank you very much for coming to my party. I will continue to thank the publishing house Corpus and Varya Gornostaeva for publishing my book. Moreover, if it weren’t for Varya, it is unknown when this would have happened and would have happened at all, because I am a disorganized and somewhat lazy person, and Varya kept “kicking” me and saying: “Well, when is it already?” And in the end she achieved her goal.

I am very grateful to Lyudmila Ulitskaya for her undeservedly flattering preface to my book. I am grateful to the artist Alexander Bondarenko. And not just because the book is so beautiful. As they say in the old Soviet film: “Happiness is when you are understood!” And so the artist calls me and starts saying: “Okay, I read it, I need to make the text like this, and like this, and like that!” Just great! After all, you write and don’t know what will happen. And the person read it and, using some of his own artistic means, represents your text. By the way, this is a wonderful idea, which, in my opinion, has never existed before: each story begins with a different initial letter, and, in my opinion, this perfectly reflects the idea of ​​diversity, which is very dear to me.

I want to thank the editor Natasha Bogomolova, because the book is difficult to edit: there are many different fonts, different foreign words, quotes and a lot of incorrect and non-standard things - since the book is about all sorts of unusual things, but this, of course, is very difficult for the editor. And many thanks to everyone involved in the publication!

I am grateful to my colleagues. I have been writing popular “stuff” about the Russian language for many years and I really appreciate that my colleagues are very sympathetic to this. In fact, very often, when someone tries to talk in “profane language” about the subject of his study, scientists react nervously to this. But over the years, my colleagues have never told me that something was not written scientifically enough or boring enough.

I am grateful to my children, who, unfortunately, are late and will not hear this. But I am grateful to them for the joy of inspiration and for the fact that thanks to communication with them I can “keep my finger on the pulse” and know all the latest trends in youth slang. The book is dedicated to my children - Varya and Grisha, but also to all my relatives. In particular, to my niece Ksyusha, who was not late. And in the book there is a phrase she said at the age of five: “I have a big problem with reading today!” In general, the book is populated by all my friends and acquaintances. Varya Gornostaeva didn’t know, but there is a wonderful phrase from her youngest son: “Brother, what kind of negativity is this?” Mom forgot, but I have all the moves written down! (Varvara laughs.) So thank you all very much!

Actually, what is this book about and for? Many people are interested in language and want to learn something about their native language. But it turns out—partly because of the traditions of schooling—that people can only talk about language in terms of “right and wrong.” That is, they think that linguistics is the science of how to spell the word “engineer.” And this is absolutely not true. After all, in fact, language is a fantastically interesting thing. Thinking about language, about words, we can understand a lot about ourselves, about society, about what is happening to us. About our culture and so on.

I'm trying to talk about our language in a different way, not just stigmatize misuse. Language, as we were all taught, is a means of communication, and this is the most important thing you need to know about language, we somehow forget about it. Language is the most powerful and subtle mechanism for generating and transmitting meaning. Therefore, it is very offensive when language begins to be used not as a tool of communication, but as an instrument of hatred.

I wish this had never happened, and I want to end my presentation of the book by quoting a poem by Bulat Okudzhava:

“The language is not to blame,” noted Mr. Olbrychsky, “
Everything creates his unique face:
Market chatter, sprinkles and stubs,
And friendly mumbling, and lines from eternal books.
<…>
When the fire of enmity is more merciless and steeper,
And the knife trembles in the hand, and the eye looks into the slit,
What does language, great and mighty, have to do with it?
A container of love both before and after us?

Thank you!

E. Shmeleva: Of course, after such poems we need to give the floor to the writers. When I recently received Irina’s book as a gift, I read the foreword by Lyudmila Ulitskaya. It seems to me that receiving a foreword from such a writer is like being awarded an order. I would really like Lyudmila Evgenievna to say something.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya: In fact, I am a “person from the street”, because my education is not literary. I have such gaps in knowledge that a person with a philological education cannot have. And I'm a biologist. This is a very good education, it seemed to me very important and useful in life, but thanks to it I am a constant amateur in the field of literature and speech. I am always glad that a professional simply knows this and that, as they told him in his first year, so he knows it. And that’s why I sometimes manage to make “discoveries” in a place that philologists have already known a hundred times. But there is still some freshness in the perception, based precisely on the fact that I came “from the street.”

I must say that Irina Levontina’s books - both the previous one (“Russian with a dictionary”) and this one - turned out to be incredibly important for me. There were several educated linguists in my family: one of my uncles started with Yu. M. Lotman, the second one, the last language he learned was Sanskrit, and he was the seventeenth. And I only knew that there are such philologically gifted people, because I myself have not been able to really learn English all my life, although I spent an insane amount of time on this study. So I have a persistent, long-standing inferiority complex in this.

But Irina’s book cured me a little from this feeling, I realized that you can treat the tongue the way I do: not quite confidently, sometimes by touch, sometimes expecting some “gifts” from it, sometimes experiencing very great anxiety: “And is THIS possible? It turned out it IS POSSIBLE! And in a sense, this freed me from some of my internal blocks and connected with my biological idea of ​​the world in which we live.

The fact is that I am a geneticist, I studied biology and evolution especially closely, biology is a science exclusively about this. And at the time when I was studying, before language, before speech, there were no psychologists, no psycholinguists, no neurogeneticists - and there were no such specialties! - no one has come to this yet. Therefore, now, while reading this book, I always feel how it trembles under my hand, because today we know this, and it is absolutely clear that tomorrow we will know ten times more. And I saw a linguistic picture of the world here and now. Read it, it's a wonderful book!

E. Shmeleva: Of course, it’s very nice to hear such words about linguists, but now, literally every day, it turns out that the structure of the world and the structure of language are very similar things... And linguists in America are now working in close collaboration with geneticists. Now I give the floor to Alexey Shmelev, a famous philologist professor. But most importantly, he is Irina’s co-author! They have several interesting articles and two wonderful books about the Russian linguistic picture of the world. Although they are strictly scientific, they are very easy to read.

Alexey Shmelev: I will say a few words about the “scientific” nature of the book. I would not classify it as a strictly scientific book, but I will still say about two of its significant “disadvantages.” The book is read with great interest and reveals not only to the general public, but also to linguists a lot of new and previously unknown things about the Russian language. And the fact that there is a contrast to her scientific books is apparently due to the fact that Irina achieved what linguistics did not achieve, I would say, in the 20th century. At least Russian linguistics.

Linguistic works were written in an unusually complex language, sometimes even somewhat esoteric and incomprehensible even to specialists. This was partly done intentionally: in one of her essays, Irina Levontina mentions that by formulating the topics of conferences, reports, and sometimes even the texts of reports, people thus tried to deny access to this area of ​​science to “Komsomol boys,” who otherwise would have turned any conference to the Komsomol meeting. And at serious conferences, the wonderful Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics largely developed its own language as a means of encryption from the supervisory authorities.

Now such a need has disappeared, but the inertia was extremely long. And here I can say that Irina Levontina implemented the program that Alexander Solzhenitsyn put forward in a letter to Tatyana Grigorievna Vinokur in 1966. They had some controversy over whether it was good to use the word “contamination,” among other things, in journalistic articles. I quote Solzhenitsyn: “Terms are terms, but still, wherever you can say it more simply, and more clearly, so that not only can you understand without a dictionary, but a modestly literate person can even enjoy it - write like that. And maybe you can somehow manage without “contamination” (you can leave it in the works of the Academy if you’re really stubborn). And maybe sometimes without phraseological units. For example, in modern American physical literature they have learned to write so simply that a child can understand it. And the problems there are no less than yours. This is how they do it? »

And Irina Levontina wrote such a book that you read it and lick your fingers. But in this regard, I had two boring comments. First: I read almost like a scientific work and wonder: where is the scientific apparatus (for example, the word index)? And only then I understand that this is not a real scientific, but “as if” a popular publication. And the second remark: you read it and it’s impossible to put it down. I couldn't put this book aside until I finished reading it. These are the two “disadvantages” of this book.

E. Shmeleva: Yes, the fact that it is very easy to read and you don’t want to put it down is a very significant drawback of this book. Among my thanks, I also wanted to say gratitude to the newspaper “Troitsky Option - Science”; its representatives are here at the presentation. It seems to me that I was “illegally” appointed as the moderator of this meeting. Because I consider myself the “godmother” of Irina’s other book, “Russian with a Dictionary.”

How did Irina begin to become interested, how did she begin to prepare such short, interesting essays about words? From 2002 to 2007, Irina and I at Mayak produced such a program as “Gramotey”. And Irina had to speak every week and talk about something. Moreover, when they came up with the section, I thought that Irina would tell what everyone knows about. But every time, for each program, she prepared something new that she had just learned, read, and connected with that. And the first book was partly inspired by this program. But the second book is, of course, Irina’s weekly columns in the Troitsky Option newspaper.

I. Levontina: Thank you! Indeed, I was going to say this, it was written down in the plan, but I missed it due to my bad handwriting. Of course, I wouldn’t write that much. But since I signed up to do these columns in the “Trinity Option,” I had to. Many thanks to the newspaper, because if it weren’t for the harsh conditions, the book would not have happened.

E. Shmeleva: I would also like Lev Semyonovich Rubinstein to tell us something. Although it must be said that Lev Semyonovich has been communicating with linguists for so many years (as Dovlatov said, “he drank so much of my blood...”) that now he is already half a linguist. And it is no longer clear who he is more - a linguist, a poet or a writer.

Lev Rubinstein: So many wonderful things have been said here, I don’t even know what to add. Alexey Shmelev said that there were shortcomings in the book - I didn’t know that they were there, but now I will know. There cannot be a book without flaws; this is always suspicious. Although they said that I am almost a linguist, this is not so, I am a friend of linguists. And the father of a linguist. But, of course, I have, to put it mildly, a partial attitude towards language.

I want to pick up where Elena Shmeleva began, saying that this book is not only scientific, but also literary - it seems so to me too. I know that among “academic” people, a review of a book: “This is literature” is considered rather negative. But I am convinced that a good, honest scientific text will inevitably be literature. Moreover, it seems to me that today's modern art, and in particular modern literature, is primarily a criticism of language. Not in the sense of “scold”, but criticism (like Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”). Because, as it seems to me, in no other area do such dramatic, and perhaps even tragic, events occur that occur in the field of language.

I often write about a language as a “user” of it. And he has more than once expressed the opinion that now, in our time, we exist in a situation of some kind of linguistic catastrophe. Which, in a sense, is the very humanitarian one. Because I have not seen the greater linguistic mistrust, misunderstanding and alienation that we see in our time throughout my entire life.

And we must always remember that language is both a free space and an enslaved space. A space of violence and at the same time a space of love, liberation and friendliness. Language divides just as much as it unites. It seems to me that Ira happily combines the ability to simply write with the level of a real specialist. This is a rare combination, by the way... Writing and reading about language is the most exciting and responsible activity today. Congratulations to Ira, and I encourage you all to buy and read this wonderful book.

E. Shmeleva: Finally (from Lev Semyonovich) the words “language catastrophe” were heard. And then I kept thinking that now it’s not supposed to talk about the Russian language without panicking notes. Most meetings begin with the fact that “the Russian language is dying,” “everything has deteriorated,” and so on. Of course, a lot is changing, changing before our eyes. To say that nothing is happening is wrong.

In recent years, linguists have been acting as a kind of psychotherapists useful to society. It is the linguists who reassure people and say that there is no catastrophe, that the language is alive, changes are taking place in it, nothing will happen to our language. It will still be beautiful, you can express a variety of thoughts on it.

Of course, if you just say that without arguing, it doesn’t give anything. But it seems to me that Irina’s books precisely show how these changes, which often irritate us all, are built into language. We are accustomed to the language that our parents taught us. And when we hear another language, it cannot but make us tremble at first. In her book, Irina describes how new words are integrated into the language, how they carry new meanings, that new words do not appear by chance, that the new reality in some sense must be described by a new language.

But at the same time, it is absolutely obvious that Irina does not have a hint of pathos: that everything is simple and wonderful and we don’t need to do anything. Many people now have an inability to express their thoughts, a kind of dumbness. Now it has become very noticeable. The Russian language of different groups of people is very different, and very often representatives of different groups do not understand each other because they speak different “Russian languages”. This is such a feature of our time. It seems to us that we have explained everything and told everything, but a terrible argument begins, almost leading to a fight - virtual on the Internet, in reality it can be real. Because people don’t understand each other and don’t want to understand.

A. Shmelev: It is no coincidence that the very meaning of “achieve mutual understanding” is described in Russian by the phraseology “to find, to find a common language.”

E. Shmeleva: In general, to understand each other means to find a common language. If you have questions, please ask. I would also like to say: linguists and scientists in general are very strict about the “easy genre,” although it is quite difficult. But that Irina’s book is not like that is shown by the fact that there are many linguists in our audience now: colleagues also came to us from St. Petersburg. And it seems that this is very “symptomatic”.

A. Shmelev: And about life, because, as Irina writes, “language is inseparable from life.”

Question: I am a graduate of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University. Tell me, how do modern philologists feel about the abundance of dialects, especially in Moscow, because there are fewer of them in St. Petersburg?

I. Levontina: This is a very interesting question. It so happened that we are accustomed to thinking that the correct language is what they say “on TV” and in Moscow. Well, in St. Petersburg to some extent. And everything else is dialects or something else. But linguists understand that Russia is a very large country and intelligent and educated people live there in different places, who speak excellent Russian, read a huge number of books, but just speak a little differently. The Russian language there is a little different; it is a regional version of the Russian literary language.

Only now is it becoming clear that such linguistic xenophobia is not a very good thing. I believe that by “dialect” you mean not just a village dialect, but regional characteristics. In general, our attitude towards the regional characteristics of the language must change. In Germany, for example, where there are many dialects, people treat their linguistic characteristics with interest and tenderness, cultivate and emphasize them. It seems to me that this is generally a very important problem.

E. Shmeleva: This is a complex problem. When some classical play is shown at the local theater and the nobles speak in this “talk,” it seems very strange to us. As a linguist, I understand that this attitude is wrong, but as a spectator, I believe that there is a language of “Maly Theater actors”, which my grandmother used to say that theater actors should speak the “correct” language.

Question: I am a lawyer by training and constantly work with language. Two questions. One question: we all know how the Indo-European languages ​​developed, how quickly the English language changed, how quickly the society developed behind it. How do you look at the history of the development of the Russian language (and Indo-European languages ​​in general): what stage is it at and how quickly is it changing? The second question is utilitarian: as a lawyer, I see that in Russian society an entire class of professions and activities has been replaced by the English language. There is simply a replacement of people who, even in the USSR, daily honed their professional language, followed every word, and their professions are replaced with professions in a foreign language.

I. Levontina: First question. I don’t really understand about the stage at which the language is, but I want to say that the Russian language adequately responds to changes in life, and, as they say, it “meets the challenges of life.”

It changes as life changes. And this suggests that it is effective. Regarding borrowings: many professional fields use English terminology, right?

Question: The Russian language is being replaced, displaced.

I. Levontina: Do you mean that they speak English and not Russian? Yes, this is a serious problem. I say and write everywhere that people misunderstand what a threat to language is. It is believed that the threat is youth slang, swearing, and some borrowings. In fact, these are all normal phenomena in language - different styles, borrowings, and so on. But what is bad for a language is when it is forced out of some spheres of life, used in a limited sphere - in everyday life or somewhere else, and, say, in science or some other spheres it is expelled.

Indeed, there is such a danger in the scientific field. We would all like our science to be more integrated into world science, but this is fraught with danger. Scientists say: “Why do we need to write in Russian? We’d better write in English right away, for world magazines.” And it seems to me very important that they understand that preserving their segment of the Russian language is a task that must be solved. Here I agree, there is a danger.

Question: I teach Russian in Germany for foreigners, for students from immigrant families.

I. Levontina: Confirm that in Germany they treat regional languages ​​differently.

Question (continued): Yes, completely different. These languages ​​are loved, studied, and used. My question is this: in the Russian language, declension of numerals is a very complex problem. For example, I have repeatedly heard “pass for one.”

I. Levontina: For one ticket? Yes, that's right.

Question (continued): For one person.

I. Levontina: It was “for one ticket.” Declension of numerals is a big problem. When we did a program about the Russian language, we asked our listeners to put, for example, the numeral 9999 in the instrumental case. It was a win-win. On the one hand, we all know that the system of declension of numerals is falling apart. On the other hand, language is not an entirely natural object. And we do not quite calmly look at language changes - as natural processes, believing that this is normal. Linguistic norms have a certain cultural status and value; we teach children to pronounce words correctly. Yes, there is such a phenomenon, but we are trying to make it develop more slowly. Among us there is a representative of the Russian speech culture sector of the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, what will he tell us? (Addressing Alexey Shmelev, head of the IRYA sector).

A. Shmelev: I can say that the norms for declension of numerals were artificial from the very beginning. In real speech, numerals were always declined in a different way than was written in textbooks, where only one way was identified. But still, the correct inflection of words remains for some an indicator of literacy, and this is good.

Question: You said that the literary norm is what they say on TV. Not only in our country, in other countries too. But recently, a large number of dialects or regional features of the language have penetrated into the speech of announcers. How do you feel about this? Should the speech of announcers be an absolute literary norm, or are dialects acceptable in the speech of announcers?

I. Levontina: Actually, I didn’t say that the literary norm is “as they say on TV.” I said that many people are accustomed to thinking this way, focusing on the previous era, when announcers kept a slightly archaic norm of speech. But. Firstly, now there is no such profession as “announcer”, everything has changed. Although, for example, Channel One still pays great attention to the correctness of speech.

E. Shmeleva: But they have spelling errors in the ticker.

I. Levontina: But they consider the correctness of speech important. How should it be, from my point of view? I think differently. There are different genres. In talk shows, real people are interesting; it makes no sense to select them based on whether they put accents correctly or use declensions. And if this is a program about culture, it is desirable that the presenter of the program knows the literary norm. In general, I believe that a presenter on central channels should know literary standards. As a viewer, it irritates me when I hear the presenters’ dialectal peculiarities. I have an excellent attitude towards dialect features, but on central television it is desirable that the presenters adhere to the literary norm. Dialectal features bother me in this case.

Question: I am an author and teacher from St. Petersburg. Question: how does modern literature influence the state of language and speech in which we live? And the second question: as a state called upon to take care not only of the army and the rest, but also of the language, how do you assess the role of the state, is everything good with us?

I. Levontina: It’s better for the state to worry less about the language, we’ll do it ourselves. When it starts to care, it necessarily prohibits, closes, fines, and so on. Apparently he doesn’t know any other way.

A. Shmelev: The “Russian Language Law” does not work. What is its great advantage: if it worked, it would be significantly worse.

I. Levontina: In addition, a lot of money is spent on the federal Russian Language program, but it is not spent on Russian language services, dictionaries, support for Russian language teachers, or holding some kind of educational events - no. It is spent on “promoting” the Russian language abroad, as it is written in the program, on the mysterious “development of the Russian language.” Someone sits and makes up new words for money, or what? At events where officials pour empty things into empty things. It’s better for us to do it ourselves, without the state somehow.

And the first question is about influence: of course, literature influences language. And this book fair is a very comforting sight, no matter what. How many good books people publish and write! The crush in the wardrobe shows how people need books.

L. Ulitskaya: Lately I’ve been thinking about the universal, huge illusion in which we all live. The fact is that culture is “on top” of the state. The state is an element of culture, and not vice versa. The state has certain functions. But he is not entrusted with leading culture, because culture is a much larger phenomenon, of a much more general order. Therefore, the belief that the state will say something and the culture will be better or worse is one of the most ridiculous misconceptions that can exist.

Let's say, our Duma - should these statesmen also be in charge of culture?! I don’t know how they can manage the economy and other affairs with such a cultural level, but the fact that they cannot manage culture is beyond any doubt. Culture is you and me. These are people who read books for whom culture matters. They are the creators of language, not its rippers. Because the language that the state is now offering us is usurped, compressed, distorted. Even castrated, I would say. Think about it, they want to deprive us of our swear words! The absolute form of the language, ancient, in demand! How? Why? And you don’t need to guide me in this regard.

L. Rubinstein: Otherwise he’ll send it. I would like to briefly answer the question: “Should the government be concerned about the state of the Russian language?” Of course, you should take care of the condition of YOUR tongue.

L. Ulitskaya: At the end of our presentation, I would like to say a few words about one more book. Irina’s book is wonderful, fundamental, and examines major processes in language. And just today a book was published that traces language processes during 2014. This is Marina Vishnevetskaya’s book “Dictionary of Changes 2014”. It can be considered as an appendix to Irina’s book; it tells how language reacts to political, economic and a wide variety of events occurring in the country and the world.

Photo by N. Demina

Video recording of the presentation, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=uioSpv0YiV0