Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Soviet Linguistics of the 1920s and 1930s and the Scholarly Heritage
- 3 ‘Sociology’ in Soviet Linguistics of the 1920–30s: Shor, Polivanov and Voloshinov
- 4 Theoretical Insights and Ideological Pressures in Early Soviet Linguistics: The Cases of Lev Iakubinskii and Boris Larin
- 5 Early Soviet Linguistics and Mikhail Bakhtin's Essays on the Novel of the 1930s
- 6 Language as a Battlefield – the Rhetoric of Class Struggle in Linguistic Debates of the First Five-Year Plan Period: The Case of E.D. Polivanov vs. G.K. Danilov
- 7 The Tenacity of Forms: Language, Nation, Stalin
- 8 The Word as Culture: Grigorii Vinokur's Applied Language Science
- 9 Language Ideology and the Evolution of Kul'tura iazyka (‘Speech Culture’) in Soviet Russia
- 10 Psychology, Linguistics and the Rise of Applied Social Science in the USSR: Isaak Shpil'rein's Language of the Red Army Soldier
- Appendix 1 Introduction to Japhetidology: Theses, Ivan Meshchaninov
- Appendix 2 Glossary of Names
- Appendix 3 List of Contributors
- Notes
- Index of Names
4 - Theoretical Insights and Ideological Pressures in Early Soviet Linguistics: The Cases of Lev Iakubinskii and Boris Larin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Soviet Linguistics of the 1920s and 1930s and the Scholarly Heritage
- 3 ‘Sociology’ in Soviet Linguistics of the 1920–30s: Shor, Polivanov and Voloshinov
- 4 Theoretical Insights and Ideological Pressures in Early Soviet Linguistics: The Cases of Lev Iakubinskii and Boris Larin
- 5 Early Soviet Linguistics and Mikhail Bakhtin's Essays on the Novel of the 1930s
- 6 Language as a Battlefield – the Rhetoric of Class Struggle in Linguistic Debates of the First Five-Year Plan Period: The Case of E.D. Polivanov vs. G.K. Danilov
- 7 The Tenacity of Forms: Language, Nation, Stalin
- 8 The Word as Culture: Grigorii Vinokur's Applied Language Science
- 9 Language Ideology and the Evolution of Kul'tura iazyka (‘Speech Culture’) in Soviet Russia
- 10 Psychology, Linguistics and the Rise of Applied Social Science in the USSR: Isaak Shpil'rein's Language of the Red Army Soldier
- Appendix 1 Introduction to Japhetidology: Theses, Ivan Meshchaninov
- Appendix 2 Glossary of Names
- Appendix 3 List of Contributors
- Notes
- Index of Names
Summary
An examination of the legacy of two Russian linguists of the early Soviet period, Boris Alexandrovich Larin (1893–1964) and Lev Petrovich Iakubinskii (1892–1945), shows that their interest in ‘living vernacular speech’ (‘zhivaia razgovornaia rech'’), so typical of the sociolinguistic approach to language study, served as a source of genuine inspiration that led them to a novel approach to Russian language studies in early Soviet linguistics. It also provided them with what largely constituted their source of data – everyday language, mostly spoken (or transcribed spoken language) and all language varieties rather than just the standard one.
Representatives of the first generation of Soviet linguists, Boris Larin and Lev Iakubinskii advanced the sociological paradigm in Russian linguistics in the beginning of the 20th century while simultaneously pursuing traditional lines of research. They had been educated as linguists by, inter alia, Jan (Ivan) Baudouin de Courtenay, a linguist of exceptional abilities and a person of liberal values, active civic orientation and political awareness, and by Aleksei Shakhmatov, who imbued them with his love for ‘living speech’. Both Larin and Iakubinskii lived and worked in Leningrad; their professional paths crossed at Petrograd- Leningrad University and the Herzen Pedagogical Institute, the institutions where they worked in various capacities in the 1920–1930s, and at seminars at ILIaZV (Institut sravnitel'noi istorii iazykov i literatur zapada i Vostoka (Institute for Comparative History of the languages and Literatures of the West and East), which promoted creative thought and new research.
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- Information
- Politics and the Theory of Language in the USSR 1917–1938The Birth of Sociological Linguistics, pp. 53 - 68Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010