The Role and Place of Archaic Conjunctions in Modern Journalism

Abstract

The article analyses the use of Russian archaic subordinate conjunctions «кабы», «коли», «дабы», «бо», «ибо» in modern journalistic texts concerning the relevance of their use. The research is carried out as a part of the study devoted to the expression of conditionality relationships through complex sentences in the bookish style, a journalistic one, in particular. The sources used in the study consist of printed and online books, as well as periodicals and magazines publishing ana-lytical articles, essays, reports, and interviews on issues of public interest. The author assumes that the choice of atypical linguistic means should be considered as an indicator of the language flexibility, its settings for the most accurate expression of meaning and a specific communication situation. By the analysis of concrete examples, it is shown that the use of archaic conjunctions correlates with the basic functions of a journalistic style (informational, educa-tional, evaluative, incentive, influencing ones), thereby its use is stylistically jus-tified. Journalists resort to these means of conjunction to convey someone’s speech with the aim of marking a high style, adding a historical, dialectic con-notation, a playful or ironic tone.It is noted that unproductive archaic conjunctions are primarily used in their main etymological meaning, while the field of their meanings in dialects and colloquial speech is expanding. In this way, an organic combination of the elements of bookishness and colloquiality is historically inherent in the Russian literary language, which is most clearly manifested in journalism.Attention is drawn to the fact that the study of archaic vocabulary and the appropriateness of its use is of interest with regard to developing and pre-serving the richness and variability of the language, especially in modern condi-tions of standardization, simplification, and unification of languages in general and the Russian language in particular.