Abstract
At the beginning of the ’30s—the period of lively debates on the relation between language and society—one of the main issues in linguistics was language heterogeneity. On the example of the texts by Boris Larin, Georgij Danilov and Lev Jakubinskij we shall compare two attitudes about unity and division of a language. If the studies by Larin and Danilov in various ways establish divisions in society and language at the end of the ’20s, in the ’30s there is a marked tendency to recognize language unity and the cohesiveness of the proletarian society, as seen in socio-linguistic analyses by Jakubinskij. The conclusion, suggested at the end of this exposition, claims that the idea of one national language grows in importance in the discourse of the Soviet linguistics at the beginning of 1930s. Disappearance of the contemporary language heterogeneity in the discourse of Soviet linguists of the period corroborates how linguistics adapts to the political conceptions of society.
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Notes
See Bazylev and Neroznak (2001, pp. 90–120). The group was active from 1930 to 1932 and fought the doctrine of Nikolaj Marr and his adepts. Among the prominent figures of Jazykfront were T. P. Lomtev, G. K. Danilov, Ja. V. Loja. P. S. Kuznecov. Due to the pressures of the Marrists, the group fell apart in 1933 (Alpatov 2003).
It is worth noting that as a result of this mechanistic notion and fierce criticism from other linguists, Danilov had to publicly renounce his views and published an article ‘My mistakes' in 1931 (Danilov 1931a). Such public recantations and renouncements were a part of Soviet everyday in the late ’30s.
The opposition is comparable to that of Vasilij I. Abaev who in his studies (Abaev 1934, 1936) distinguished two language functions: as a technique and as an ideology. Yet in Abaev’s case, this differentiation is more elaborated and specified: the language form is always a technique, but the opposition concerns two aspects of semantics: in Abaev’s view, the technical semantics indicates what is expressed by a lexical unit (or, in modern parlance, its contemporary denotative meaning), while the ideological semantics manifests how it is expressed—that means : what was the first meaning that would, according to Abaev, reflect the world view and representation of the social and historical milieu where the lexical unit appeared (Abaev 2006).
References
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Uhlik, M. Simmering in the Soviet pot: language heterogeneity in early Soviet socio-linguistics. Stud East Eur Thought 60, 285–293 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9061-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9061-z