“JE VOUS JURE, MADAM? RUSSIAN LANGUAGE FOR ME IS JUST LIKE A GAG IN MY MOUTH...” (ABOUT COXCOMBS AND THE WAY THEY SPOILED THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE)

Basing on the text materials of Russian comedies of the second half of XVIII century, pieces of the outstanding playwrights A.P. Sumarokov, D.I. Fonvizin, V.I. Lukin, I.A. Krylov, A.O. Klushin, D.I. Volkov, D.I. Khvostov and many others, gallomania is considered. It is proved that linguistic phenomenon gives a clear idea of funny and strange jargon of coxcombs, and it spoils Russian language. And between lines of drama replicas there is an appeal of the authors to keep the integrity and richness of a language, to use foreign words not because of “impetuous favour” but for “need”. It is established that in XVIII century in different genres of comedies (lyric, lachrymatory, moralizing, antivilleinage, political and etc.) the malices of Russian reality were laughed - particularly coxcombs were laughed at, because their favourite way of communication was to use Russian-French jargon, “to mix the Nizhny Novgorod dialect with French”, following the French fashion. It is stated that coxcomb jargon, which was widely used in the comedies of XVIII is a junction of codes or system code attraction which were characteristic features for jargon and the later periods (for example, modern hippy slang). The facts of the codes’ switch - foreign insertions should be distinguished from this phenomenon.

dramaturgy of XVIII century, gallomania, coxcomb language, speech culture, coxcombs