«Und Kaine Ende»: Russian Literary Language Diachronic Stylistics Formation

Abstract

This paper considers diachronic stylistics of literary language, a new area of scientific research. The knowledge about functional style specifics, national stylistic nuances of linguistic devices used in different speech situations in a certain period shifted from synchrony to diachrony in modern research. To understand the Russian language evolution it is important to consider the ways of literary language development regarding its stylistic means and varieties. Russian worldview dynamics is identified by functional style patterns formation and analysis of particular style’s speech systematicity. Emergence of new written language application fields divided universal liturgical language into formal, scientific, verbal folklore, and other types of languages. Analysis of all-Russian written artefacts from different eras and regional documents reading demonstrate the change of functional stylistic system caused by stylistic devices enrichment and choice of effective expressive means. Substyles, text genres, speech genres are developed, speech devices markedness, typing of form and context of a text within particular style are formed. This concludes that the dynamics of extratextual factors is the main reason for Russian literary language stylistic transformations. Nowadays the evolution of literary style, scientific style presentation as a system with its own linguistic devices is studied actively. Journalistic style characteristics in different historical periods, advertising genres formation and online communication features are studied. Liturgical and colloquial styles evolution issue remains open. Diachronic stylistics’ major problems are Russian language functional style specifics “crystallizing”, combining functional semantic speech types methods, composition improvement, formation choice patterns and language tools disposition within the text.