Scientists predict that very soon correct literary speech will become the domain of the upper echelons of society
The poor cannot understand the rich
Today the most famous example of social stratification of language is Great Britain. There is the language of the aristocracy with impeccable pronunciation, rich vocabulary and complex speech constructions – partly as archaic as the tradition of royal tea drinking. But there is also a wealth of colloquial dialects, folk sociolects (social dialects), the most famous of which is Cockney.
This language of the natives of the lower and middle classes of London, with an abundance of mispronounced words, abbreviations and intricate rhymes, became so famous that the administration of one of the districts of the British capital even installed several ATMs that speak Cockney – just for fun. When it comes to career, philological problems come to the fore. For example, the daughter of a shopkeeper Margaret Thatcher and the son of a former circus performer John Major had to make considerable efforts to master "Oxford English", which gave them an additional bonus in career growth.
In Russia there were also their own sociolects and there was also a linguistic gap between the lower and upper classes. After the October Revolution of 1917, with the disappearance of the aristocracy and pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, it temporarily healed. But soon everything began to return to normal: those who rose on the social elevator mastered the literary language. True, in the USSR the division was not along the axis of "rich – poor", but according to the principle of "educated – uneducated".
In the 90s another revolution took place, which formed a new political, economic and intellectual elite. It would seem that it should have become the bearer of the correct literary language. But it did not happen. "As a result of the inversion of sociolects that occurred in the 90s," explains Elena Kara-Murza, associate professor of the Department of Stylistics of the Russian Language at the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, to Itogi, "the language of the elite has actually become profanity. This 'bossy swearing' is still widespread. For now, even the speech of the intelligentsia, which could also become a linguistic elite, is far from always meeting the norm."
A vivid example is a recent baseline dictation in Russian at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. Freshmen failed it with completely inexplicable errors. Among the gems were "patsient" (misspelling of patient), "geniral" (misspelling of general), "cherez-chur" (misspelling of too much), "orrestovat" (misspelling of arrest). What was happening was ready to be attributed to incomprehensible protest, to mocking, finally. But the story repeated with the final dictation at the end of the semester! One of the students turned the preposition "iz-pod" (from under) into "i-spot". And these are the same people who in five years will carry our great and mighty language to the masses. What can we say about the jargon of the inhabitants of Rublyovka, where profanity is encountered no less often than the words "glamorous", "exclusive" and "cult".
It turns out that in terms of speech level, the illiterate majority in our country are both those who are supposed to be so by status, and those who, in theory, should express themselves in a high style. And so far this does not fit into global experience. But what will happen next?
Respect and Esteem
Director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities Maxim Krongauz believes that two forces are simultaneously at work in language today – centrifugal and centripetal: "On the one hand, there is its further stratification, mainly along professional lines. There is the language of managers, programmers, financiers, and so on." Indeed, managers who have completed an MBA course frighten those around them with the semi-decent "ebitda" (from the English EBITDA), which in essence is an indicator of profit before various deductions.
Programmers, on the other hand, scold bydlokoders (half-baked programmers), talk about bugs (flaws) in programs. "Moreover, jargons are becoming more and more fragmented," says Maxim Krongauz. "Even representatives of such related professions as PR people and advertisers speak differently. Sometimes their own jargon unites employees of one company. But at the same time, everyone – rich and poor, educated and uneducated – meet in chats, blogs, social networks, that is, they enter into a common dialogue, which in turn contributes to the unification of language. And this trend is much stronger than the desire for stratification."
Here – in the internet space – linguistic fashion arises. It has always existed, but before the advent of the Network, it took more time for a particular word to enter common usage than now. But this fashion also passes quickly. For example, now we are witnessing how distorted orthography (the famous "language of scumbags" with their "afftar zhzhot", "peshi ischo", "preved", etc.) is losing popularity. This is visible even on sites that were the founders of the trend. On some of them, for an excessive number of errors, moderators can easily "ban" a user (prohibit them from speaking on the forum).
There are more and more such zealots of the native language in the vastness of Runet. They have even come up with the name Grammar nazi. Just try to write "steklyanny" (glass) with one "n" on a forum – and you will be cursed until the end of your days. However, what one wants to see as a tendency towards the ennoblement of internet language may well turn out to be just another fashion, which will be replaced by, for example, the habit of pisat vse latinnitsei, potomu chto zahotelos (writing everything in Latin letters because one feels like it). Therefore, there is no reason to expect that the linguistic elite will come into real life from the virtual world. That means it must arise some other way.
My tongue is my friend
One of the ways experts say could accelerate the emergence of an elite, and with it the social stratification of any language, is a complete transition to a system of paid higher education (such ideas are floating in the heads of some of our learned men). Following the example of the same Great Britain, where the linguistic elite was forged within the walls of legendary Oxford and Cambridge, education at which only children of wealthy parents can afford. The chance for free education is given only to young people who are exceptionally gifted – their community of wealthy people is ready to accept them into its ranks and issue grants for study.
As long as we still have more free education than paid, and it is even of higher quality, representatives of the elite do not consider it truly... elite – it is too accessible to the masses. And, sparing no expense, they send their offspring to study abroad, to the same Britain or Switzerland. But these “envoys,” paradoxically, will also not be able to become our linguistic elite. “Young people will have impeccable English and domestic Russian,” Maxim Krongauz is sure, “but talking about complex matters, such as economics or politics, will be difficult for them in Russian.” It turns out that so far neither lineage, nor the thickness of the wallet, nor even belonging to typical “intellectual” professions guarantees fluency in one's native language. Why then do scientists talk about the impending stratification of language by “estates”?
The point, they believe, is that the emergence of a linguistic elite is inevitable – the division of language into sociolects is characteristic of any stable society. “A complex and rich language is needed to express complex thoughts and emotions,” says writer Dmitry Bykov. “If there is only one thought – how to survive, and two emotions – fear and hatred, then profanity is quite enough to express them. The elite, on the other hand, is open to the world; it is forced to master good Russian in order to master the material.”
Like the new Russians who replaced raspberry jackets with elegant, discreet suits of good brands, our new political and economic top will eventually understand that correct speech is as important for the image of a serious person as expensive Swiss watches. And the trend is already emerging: speaking literary language is becoming prestigious again: there are already special trainings in companies, businessmen and politicians take private lessons from language teachers, trying to master the basics of rhetoric.
And as soon as such a social demand for literate and figurative speech appears, our not very agile education system will also catch up. One can even dream of how we will have our own Oxfords, whose students will not just write without mistakes, but freely express thoughts, using all the richness of our great and mighty language. And only after that will a generation appear that has absorbed the literary language with their mother's milk.
Answering the question – whether it is good or bad that the people and their intellectual elite speak different languages – will not be unambiguous. It is great when the language in all its fullness is accessible to everyone, but if this is impossible, then someone must be its keeper and distributor. At least the elite.
Marina ZUBAKOVA,
Anastasia REZNICHENKO.