Rumors: a Traditional Motif and Image in the Fictional Worldview

Abstract

One of the traditional images of the Russian linguistic worldview is reconstructed in the article. Based on the material of historical-detective novels about Erast Fandorin by B. Akunin and by the means of semantic analysis, three metaphorical patterns of rumors that significantly diversify the fictional world of the author were identified. The first one creates a movable picture of the physical movement of a living being or a liquid element, which, with varying degrees of activity captures the space (“rumors circulate / go / leak”). The second one is based on the idea of the extensive and intensive sound signal with a fixed source and spread limits, but, sooner or later, it always becomes silent (“Moscow was buzzing”; “they rustled in Europe”). The third one is controversial, it is either based on the understanding of rumors as a global and comprehensive speech act, which active subject is the whole space of communication (“the whole Paris speaks”), or reduces their process to a specific work of tongue as an instrument of oral speech (“evil tongues say”). These patterns are absolutely transparent in the semantic and formal-linguistic version: they are based on the reinterpretation of one phase of rumors spread – Transmitting – and exist within simple sentences. In addition, such a review of the philological literature on the subject has revealed the researchers’ attention to rumors as the working mechanism of the fictional plot, as well as to their communicative nature. The large number of modern literary scholars and linguists are motivated by this double interest.