Rusistika

The study presents an overview of the research of Russian and foreign Russianists devoted to the reflection of the biblical heritage in the Russian language, which is considered as a component of the spiritual code of culture and part of the language system. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of review and analytical works in this area of Russian studies. The aim of the study is to determine the historical background, main directions, and current issues of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language. The material for the study includes more than 6800 scientific works of various genres devoted to the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language written since the first quarter of the 19th century. The research methods are heuristic, descriptive, generalization, comparison, analysis, and synthesis. The study showed that the study of the biblical heritage in the Russian language began in the late 19th century; after a long break, it intensified in the 1990s, became systematic in the first decade of the 21st century, and has currently differentiated into areas with different levels of theoretical and methodological validity, effectiveness and prospects. The most significant areas are translation, historical and etymological, phraseological, lexicographic, comparative, linguisticcultural, and theolinguistic studies. In all these areas, a set of theoretical provisions and methodological guidelines has already been formed; leading scientists and scientific centers has been determined. St. Petersburg Slavic (phraseological) school stands out because the works of its representatives and followers in Russia and abroad have significantly influenced the abovementioned areas of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language. The most important tasks in studying the biblical heritage in the Russian language today are establishing the proportion of biblical meanings and values in the spiritual code of culture, developing a theolinguistic theory of reflecting biblical content in the semantic space of the Russian language, identifying typological and contrastive features of biblical expressions in the Russian language in relation to other Slavic and non-Slavic languages, and creating educational, translation and comparative dictionaries of biblical expressions. The prospects for the research are seen in analysis of the theory and methodology of each of the identified areas of studying the heritage of the Bible in the Russian language.

The study examines the fundamental biblical eschatological words-concepts in the Russian language which define Russian spiritual culture. The aim of the study is to analyze the semantics of the biblical eschatological concepts of “court”, “God’s judgment”, “fate” and “conscience” in their diachronic sense and in textual use (based on “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and V. Grossman’s novel “Life and fate”). The research methods are general scientific, linguistic, and interdisciplinary ones. While analyzing, we proceeded, on the one hand, from understanding the relationship between language and religion as an integral process, and on the other hand, their interpenetration into each other. The study showed that the Russian linguistic consciousness actualized the original connection of fate and conscience with the judgment of the Almighty since ancient times. The analysis of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and V. Grossman’s novel “Life and fate” showed that the concepts of “court”, “God’s judgment”, “fate” and “conscience” retain their original existential orientation despite socio-cultural upheavals and changes in the social life of the Russian people. It is the biblical concepts that reliably rule the life of the Russian language, Russian culture, and the Christian values inherited by them. Based on the results of the study, a conclusion was made about the fruitfulness of adopting the theoanthropocosmic paradigm, which promotes a holistic understanding and study of language as a multidimensional spiritual reality.

The relevance of the research is conditioned by the interest of linguistics in studying the structure of polysemous words and the mechanisms of polysemy development and lexicographic fixing the meanings of words. The qualitative meaning of the adjective православный (orthodox) is also interesting for studying the linguistic conceptualization of cultural representations of native speakers. The aim of the study is to prove the existence of the qualitative meaning of the lexeme православный in modern Russian and to describe the mechanism of its occurrence. The study is based on the corpus method. It uses Russian National Corpus, its main subcorpus with the data from the central and regional media and the subcorpus of social networks. The author describes the revealed facts with lexicographic, structural-semantic, and contextual methods. Corpus data indicate such signs of qualitative meaning as comparative forms, short forms, adverb ending in -o, an abstract noun with the suffix -ость, derivatives with the meanings of intensity and expressive attitude. The number of collected examples indicates the usual nature of the phenomenon. In our opinion, in synchrony the semantic transition is related to the effect of the implicit meanings of the producing word православие (orthodoxy) which include ideas about a certain value system, worldview positions and an external way of life. The meaning of the graded feature is thus determined by the degree of proximity to the “norm” or “standard” of the manifestation of the representations. In modern Russian speech, the qualitative meaning of the lexeme correlates with the semantic oppositions “internal – external”, “true – false” and develops evaluative meanings. The obtained results suggest further study of the semantics of the adjective and its derivatives in a systemic aspect in order to describe the structure of the polysemantic adjective православный, identify the mechanisms of new meanings and expressive-evaluative connotations formation, and contextualize its functioning in different types of discourse.

Since the end of the twentieth century, linguistics has been laying the foundations for studying another language hypostasis, the spiritual one. However, the categories of spirituality and spirit have not been investigated in Russian language studies yet. This substantiates the relevance of studying the Bible heritage and spiritual space of the Russian word. The aim of the study is to show that the Russian language is the basis for the spirituality of the Russian people, which is formed and preserved in words, set expressions, proverbs with deep sacred meanings. These units fix the system of Bible values and guide the behavior of the people. The material of the study were words, set expressions, proverbs from dictionaries derived from the Bible or having sacred meanings, and some parts of the Bible. The author used descriptive, discursive, and linguistic-cultural analysis and system-semasiological interpretation of the language material. The study showed that the Russian language is the main and necessary source of spirituality for Russian people; it expresses and keeps key ideas about the God, religion, and church, which define intellectual and moral traits of Russian-speaking personality. The study reveals an important aspect of the communicative function of the Russian language, which is realized in prayers, requests to God, and in the sacred meanings of the Russian word as part of its linguistic semantics. The study proves that the Russian linguistic consciousness contains the basic religious and spiritual values and the behavior norms. The Russian language is permeated with biblical meanings so the theological-anthropocentric paradigm of scientific knowledge is prospective for Russian language studies.

The relevance of the study is conditioned by the cultural and historical value of linguistic units with a biblical cultural component and the need to improve the methods of their dictionary description. The aim of the research is to develop methods of accessible and scientifically reliable representation of the biblical cultural background of Russian lexis and phraseology in educational dictionaries for foreign students and schoolchildren. In accordance with the principle of methodological expediency, the material for the study was selected from Russian language textbooks for different categories of foreign students. The semantics of biblical units was clarified by the method of contextual analysis. The methods of lexicographic modeling, etymological paraphrasing and linguistic-cultural interpretation were used for structuring dictionary entries and developing the content of their parametric zones. As a result of the research, the authors developed the samples of linguistic-cultural commentary for biblical phraseological units in family reading dictionary for our foreign compatriots. The study identifies the possibilities of linguistic-cultural representation of biblical proverbs in the travelogue dictionary connected to video material. The parameters of ethnocentric dictionary description of georthonyms (names of national festivals) of biblical origin are defined; the techniques for interpreting biblical cultural background of toponyms and ubranonyms, including unofficial ones, are developed with various mechanisms of transonymic nomination. Samples of relevant dictionary entries are given. The dictionary materials can be useful for foreign students and for Russian schoolchildren and students because their spiritual and moral education does not always include the biblical material, despite the fact that the cultural background of biblical terms remains hidden for them in many respects.

Implementation of modern and efficient approaches to successful language training of foreign medical students is an urgent and complex task in medical education. This course is especially difficult because Russian professional medical vocabulary is extensive, has complex morphological composition and is connected in its etymology with the Latin language. The aim of the study is to test the effectiveness of computer 3D anatomy atlases for learning medical professional vocabulary on the selected topics of the discipline ‘General Anatomy’ in Russian as a foreign language. The authors used theoretical (analysis, comparison, and generalization) and diagnostic (experimental training, testing, interview, and questionnaire) methods. The obtained data were tested for the statistical significance by means of Pearson’s Chi-squa re test and the calculation of P-value (P-value = 0.04). They showed the positive influence of anatomical 3D atlases on understanding and memorization of Russian professional vocabulary among first-year foreign medical students. The final tests (online test and interview) after 5-months of experimental training showed that the number of positive (4 “good” and 5 “excellent”) results among the students of the experimental groups exceeded the number of successful results of the control groups by 19%. In their questionnaires, the participants highly appreciated the visibility and effectiveness of the modern tools (33 per cent more positive responses) compared to traditional ones. The prospect of the further research in this area may include the creation and testing of a system of electronic interactive exercises and an electronic educational thesaurus with audio content as a special addition or add-on for the interface of modern 3D anatomy atlases.