Dilogy by I. Ilf and E. Petrov in the cultural memory of young contemporaries

Abstract

The cultural memory phenomenon is relevant for modern humanities, but no linguistic research methodology has been developed for it yet. Nevertheless, it was philologists and semioticians (J. Assman, M. Yu. Lotman, and others) who laid the foundation for studying this type of collective (social) memory. An effective tool for linguistic research into cultural memory can be the precedent phenomena theory developed by Academician Yu. N. Karaulov, his students and adherers. This article is based on the cultural memory and linguistic precedent concepts and presents part of the results of a largescale linguosociological experiment. It aims to analyse fragments of young contemporaries ’ precedent knowledge, including those dating back to the novels by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. The results of the experimental data analysis are representative enough to establish which and to what extent preserved precedent phenomena related to the dilogy are relevant for the Russian-speaking secondary school and university students ’ thesaurus. The experimental results appear to be ambivalent. On the one hand, they explicate a certain, albeit low, degree of preservation of a few precedent statements from the novels (primarily, these are units actively used in advertising and passing into the category of proverbs, such as Avtomobil – neroskosh, a sredstvo peredvizheniya / A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation ; Na blyudechke s goluboi kayomochkoi / On a silver platter). On the other hand, they conclusively prove both the presence of a generational gap between the precedent knowledge of Soviet readers (the older generation) and young people. Additionally, the results indicate the high degree of precedent phenomena agnonymy dating back to the dilogy. Thus, the research reveals the loss of historically significant units of a modern young Russian’s cultural memory.