A small part of the Russian vocabulary that gives rise to many problems of description — the so-called stylistically elevated words — was selected as the object of study. A. V. Kalinin, for example, pointed to the lack of clarity in their dictionary characterization: “We may hesitate: should, for example, the words ochi (‘eyes’) and chelo (‘brow, forehead’) be classified as archaic or elevated vocabulary? It is curious that S. I. Ozhegov marks chelo as elevated … and ochi (oko) as obsolete … It seems to us that chelo is an obsolete word, while ochi is rather elevated” [1, p. 167].

Disagreements among specialists over the stylistic assessment of such vocabulary have a long history. In 1951, reviewing the manuscript of the second edition of S. I. Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language (hereafter SO), S. G. Barkhudarov observed: “The label high did not convince me that such a label was necessary…”¹ The label was indeed innovative. In the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language edited by D. N. Ushakov (hereafter TSU), which preceded Ozhegov’s dictionary, words of this type were marked bookish, obsolete, less often poetic, and still less often solemn. In the first edition of SO (1949) there were few stylistic labels in general, and some words that had been stylistically marked in TSU received no label or were marked obsolete.

The following table shows differences in the stylistic characterization of words included in the first volume of TSU and subsequently marked “high” in the second edition of SO.

Table 1. Differences in the stylistic characteristics of words

Note: a dash indicates that no stylistic label is given in the dictionary entry.

¹ Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fund 1516, Inventory 1, File 216, fol. 9. ² Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, ed. D. N. Ushakov, vol. 1, Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1935, 1564 pp. ³ S. I. Ozhegov, Dictionary of the Russian Language, ed. Academician S. P. Obnorsky, Moscow: OGIZ / State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries, 1949, 968 pp.

While preparing the second edition of the dictionary, S. I. Ozhegov took into account numerous comments by professional reviewers and the press. The criticisms directed at the first Soviet single-volume explanatory dictionary were primarily ideological in nature (for more detail, see [2–3]). Yet among them the author was unable to find a direct demand to make the stylistic characterization of words more specific, still less to introduce the label high. Nevertheless, the compiler took this revolutionary step for Soviet lexicography.

The appearance of the new label can be explained in at least two ways. First, the revision of the dictionary fell in the years of the so-called “struggle against cosmopolitanism” and the propaganda of Russian national greatness. One of the names inscribed on the banner of that ideological campaign was M. V. Lomonosov. Stalinist propaganda glorified the scholar’s patriotism and his “struggle against the dominance of foreign adventurers at the Petersburg Academy, who sought to strangle Russian science.”⁴ Under these circumstances Lomonosov’s stylistic doctrine acquired new relevance. He clearly distinguished elevated-style words within Russian vocabulary and wrote: “This style should be used to compose heroic poems, odes, and prose speeches on important matters, by which they are raised from ordinary simplicity to important magnificence. In this style the Russian language has an advantage over many present-day European languages, making use of the Slavonic language from church books” (emphasis by E. B.).⁵

No evidence has been found showing that Ozhegov paid direct attention to this particular statement by Lomonosov. Nevertheless, one may suppose that the dictionary compiler took account of the founder of Russian stylistics’ idea of the special importance of high style as one of the advantages of Russian over other languages. In addition, the use of Lomonosov’s terminology served as a kind of protective warrant for the manuscript of the second edition, which was reaching the reader only with great difficulty.

Second, the idea of high style, pragmatically intended to convey “important magnificence,” corresponded perfectly to the spirit of the age. It is revealing that one monograph on Soviet architecture of the 1930s–1950s is entitled High Stalinist Style [4].

Late Stalinism, asserting the values of the nation-state, cultivated both visual and verbal pathos. Ozhegov responded to this with exceptional sensitivity. In the second edition of his dictionary, unlike the first volume of the “Large Academic Dictionary”⁶ published in the same years, the label high was used widely.

It is significant that Ozhegov did not equate elevated words with obsolete words. Traditional poeticisms such as glas (“voice”), lanity (“cheeks”), lobzat (“to kiss”), mladoi (“young”), usta (“lips”), and others received the label old. Words were recognized as elevated when their use was determined primarily not by tribute to tradition but by a communicative task. This thesis is supported by materials from the Russian National Corpus.

Thus, the adjective bezzavetnyi (“selfless,” “wholeheartedly devoted”) was repeatedly used in emotionally saturated newspaper and magazine texts filled with Soviet pathos during the years when Ozhegov was working on the second edition of his dictionary:

“No other party in the world has enjoyed or enjoys such genuinely nationwide trust and love except the great Communist Party, which has proved in practice its selfless devotion to the interests of the people” (Science and Life, 1950);

“We have no doubt that the voters of our district will unanimously cast their votes for the Communist Akaky Alexeyevich Khorava — a great artist, statesman and public figure whose whole life is an example of selfless service to the people” (Soviet Art, 1950);

“Selfless service to the great cause of Lenin and Stalin and to the vital interests of the Soviet people earned Sergei Ivanovich the deep respect and love of the working people of our country” (Technology for the Youth, 1951) (emphasis by E. B.).⁷

It is difficult to say why the label high seemed questionable to S. G. Barkhudarov. The stylistic assessment proposed by Ozhegov clearly rested on criteria that were apparently intuitively clear to the compiler and were only formulated by researchers decades later. These include such features of words as:

— specificity of meaning (blagodeyanie — benefaction; blagoslovit — to bless);
— cultural history (bitva — battle; bichevat — to scourge/denounce);
— regular occurrence in a pathetic context (bezzavetnyi — selfless/devoted; bessmertnyi — immortal);
— association with particular genres characterized by strong emotional intensity (bezvremennyi — untimely, in an obituary; blagodarstvennyi — expressing thanks, in a letter) [5, pp. 6–7].

Elevated vocabulary proved especially sought after by Soviet journalistic style. This is entirely natural, and not only for totalitarian “newspaper” language but for media discourse in general. Numerous Russian and foreign studies of mass-media texts note the tendency of journalists and publicists to use expressive verbal means, among which elevated vocabulary undoubtedly belongs (on the language of the media, see, for example, [6–14]).

Here are several examples of the adjective bessmertnyi (“immortal”) functioning in pathetic contexts:

“Yes, he deserved it, my Stalin, immortal and simple, modest and great, leader, teacher, genius, my great sun” (V. N. Gelfand, Diaries, 1944–1946);

“For this day we lived, forgetting ourselves; so that the Hitlerite state, the Hitlerite army, the Hitlerite order might be destroyed, the heroic red-starred host went on its immortal march” (Izvestia, 1945);

“From the rostrum of this congress V. I. Lenin proclaimed the immortal slogan: ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country’” (Science and Life, 1951) (emphasis by E. B.).⁸

The activation of this lexical stratum in totalitarian language can probably be explained to a certain degree by the fact that elevated-style words are characterized by “an intensification of the peripheral component of lexical meaning — emotional evaluation, sometimes accompanied by a weakening of referential and conceptual precision…” [15, p. 13]. This quality, in turn, is characteristic of propaganda discourse as a whole. L. Fraser observed that one technique of propaganda, which he defined as double-talk, consists in semantic indeterminacy. Desemanticized ideological signs attract the audience and make it open itself to propagandistic influence [16].

One might expect that Soviet dictionaries following SO would use the label high even more broadly. This did not happen. In the Small Academic Dictionary it was retained only in part. In the post-Soviet period, use of the label high became still less consistent.

The following table shows how the stylistic characterization proposed by Ozhegov came to be displaced by other labels, to a greater or lesser degree close to it.

Comparative analysis of dictionary material from 1952 through the 2000s reveals the following variants in the transformation of stylistic labels:

— “elevated → bookish”;
— “elevated → obsolete”;
— “elevated → ironic.”

At the same time, the labels “bookish” and “obsolete” undoubtedly contain less pragmatic information than “elevated,” while the label “ironic” by no means corresponds to all possible contexts in which the lexical units under consideration may occur.

This last consideration leads one to reflect on the situational nature of a word’s stylistic possibilities. Thus, in many cases the words bagryanets (“crimson”) and beskrainii (“boundless”) would apparently be more accurately characterized not as bookish but as poetic, serving the emphatic aestheticization of a description:

“True, only the surrounding forests dress themselves in gold and crimson, while in the city there is the eternal greenery of cypresses, camphor laurels, oleanders, and other subtropical exotica” (Trud-7, 2001);

“The blue distances sank into twilight, the cows had already been driven across the pasture, and the crimson and yellow of the maples and the solitary pear trees by the pasture had already faded” (Komsomolskaya Pravda, 2002);

“The boundless expanse, the blue of the sky, the pure yellowness of the sand with coloured patches of vegetation and white saucers of salt flats fascinate and make one return to these places again and again” (Science and Life, 2007).⁹

It is doubtful, however, that the boundary between a traditional poeticism and a word filled with living elevated expressiveness (which may provisionally be called a “pathetism”) can be established objectively. In the newspaper Zavtra, which continues to be published and gravitates toward a pathetic tonality, the words bagryanets (“crimson”) and beskrainii (“boundless”) become a means of portraying a world that is not merely beautiful but spiritualized. Thus, a visit to a monastery on Mount Athos is accompanied by elevated recollections.

Table 2. Stylistic characteristics of words in different dictionaries

“The richest annals of the past unfold. One recalls one’s officer youth and the enchanting spring on the Chatkal Range of the Western Tien Shan in Uzbekistan. Fairy-tale mountain landscapes on the Turkmen-Iranian, Kyrgyz-Chinese, and Tajik-Afghan borders come alive. The weeks and months spent in the inaccessible gorges of Hissar, in the Pamir-Alai and among the wild, bizarre rocks and abandoned gardens of Childukhtaron, in the wilderness of Darvaz, return. Crystal evenings, copper-scarlet sunsets, and honey-pearl nights on the Pamir glaciers ‘Medvezhiy’ and ‘Abdukagor’ rise again. Dawn skies ignite the crimson of mountainous Crimea and hospitable Transcarpathia…

“You breathe in deeply the fragrant April air of distant, peaceful Iveria. With delight you drink a scalding infusion of aromatic herbs on the tiny veranda of the mountain Betania Monastery. With tenderness you pray at the Divine Liturgy in the cave Lavra of St David Gareji…” (emphasis by E. B.).¹⁵

The adjective beskrainii (“boundless”) should likewise be regarded as a pathetic rather than a poetic device in a congratulatory text addressed to Zavtra editor-in-chief A. Prokhanov by his grandson:

“Throughout all your work, the motif of the multidimensionality and universality of our Motherland runs like a red thread, a land in which divine and human, natural and industrial energies are intricately interwoven. Thus, our boundless forests and mirror-like lakes merge into harmonious union with the smokestacks of colossal factories and the turbines of great dams, forming the loud and mighty symphony of Empire Number Five. In our troubled time you proclaimed Russia’s unique path, the unity of man and God arising here, the eternal Russian paradise.

“My most glorious grandfather! I love you, I am proud of you, I worship you. I want to be your support, your consolation and your continuation.”¹⁶

In a number of cases, the label bookish proves insufficiently informative and not entirely accurate. In the stylistic system of the modern Russian literary language, the unquestionably bookish styles include the scholarly and the official-business styles. The verb bichevat (“to scourge; to denounce”) is used in neither of them; in contemporary speech it demonstrates not a generally bookish but a journalistic character:

“If your player lost his nerve — and at nineteen, especially in a sport so new to us, that is possible — it is not right to scourge him on live television” (Trud-7, 2010);

“Instead of calls to scourge abstract sin in the spirit of Catherine the Great, Mr Kabanov recommends that the authorities explain to Russians the concrete consequences of corruption — for example, the risk of an air disaster caused by installing substandard spare parts on an aircraft” (RBC Daily, 2009);¹⁷

“Alexander Prokhanov once suffered in every issue of the newspaper, in his sharp, metaphorical, vivid editorials, for the humiliated and defeated Soviet Motherland; he scourged and branded the collaborationist anti-people regime, called for a struggle to restore the Soviet empire, exalted the heroes and leaders of the Revolution, while behind the editor’s back, in those very same issues, certain authors spat upon our Great Revolution, our leaders, our grandfathers and fathers who built the Great Soviet superpower.”¹⁸

Thus, the expressiveness of classical poeticisms has its roots primarily in diachrony — cultural tradition, precedent texts, and a rise in stylistic colouring as a linguistic unit becomes obsolete. Yet the same words can acquire another type of expressiveness in context, one whose nature is, on the contrary, emphatically synchronic. Words provisionally designated in this article as “pathetisms” — including “newspaperisms,” or journalistic vocabulary — realize their expressive possibilities by relying on current associative links activated, for example, by the ideological content of the macrotext in which they are included.

Explanatory dictionaries rather unsystematically characterize some words from the standpoint of contemporaneity (old, obsolete) and others from a functional standpoint (poetic, journalistic), and therefore fail to provide the reader with anything approaching complete information about the diverse pragmatic possibilities of a single lexical unit.

The analysis shows that I. A. Koroleva’s assertion that “variation in stylistic labels is closely connected with the historical and socio-ideological changes of an era” [17, p. 118] is only partly correct. There is no direct correlation between the social order, the dominant ideology, and the choice of a word’s stylistic characterization in a dictionary. The compiler’s own point of view and established lexicographic tradition also play a major role.

Nor can one fully agree with I. T. Vepreva, who notes a process of “washing out” the elevated stylistic layer of vocabulary in contemporary Russian [18, p. 157]. It is important to clarify that this layer is being “washed out” of dictionaries more energetically than from living speech, and that this happens not only for objective reasons but also as a result of decisions made by dictionary compilers.

The currently accepted system of dictionary stylistic labels can hardly be called satisfactory. As already noted, information about elevated-style words is most often incomplete and inaccurate. As conclusions, therefore, lexicologists and lexicographers may be urged to pay attention to at least two current tasks:

— the development of a new scholarly field — stylistic etymology — involving detailed study of the stylistic evolution of words and the reflection of this process in dictionaries;

— improvement of the lexicographic stylistic apparatus. In large explanatory dictionaries, where space permits, it is desirable to show the various stylistic possibilities of a word; labels such as high, poetic, journalistic, ironic, and similar labels may coexist in a single dictionary entry and should necessarily be accompanied by appropriate illustrative linguistic material, including material from contemporary mass media.

Notes to quoted and cited material

⁴ I. V. Kuznetsov, “Serious Errors in the Presentation of the History of Physics,” Bolshevik, 1950, no. 6, p. 78.
⁵ M. V. Lomonosov, “Preface on the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language,” in Complete Works, vol. 7, Moscow–Leningrad: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1952, pp. 588–589.
⁶ Dictionary of the Contemporary Russian Literary Language, vol. 1, chief ed. Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences V. I. Chernyshev, Moscow–Leningrad: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1950, 767 pp.
⁷ Search results in the main corpus for bezzavetn*, Russian National Corpus; accessed 21 October 2015.
⁸ Search results in the main corpus for bessmertnyi, Russian National Corpus; accessed 21 October 2015.
⁹ Search results in the newspaper corpus for bagryanets, Russian National Corpus; accessed 21 October 2015.
¹⁵ A. Yakovlev-Kozyrev, “A Breakthrough to Athos,” Zavtra, 8 July 2002; accessed 21 October 2015.
¹⁶ I. Prokhanov, “To Prokhanov — 75,” Zavtra, 26 February 2013; accessed 21 October 2015.
¹⁷ Search results in the newspaper corpus for bichevat, Russian National Corpus; accessed 21 October 2015.
¹⁸ S. Ermolin, “Prokhanoviad, or Running in Circles…,” Zavtra, 16 September 2014; accessed 21 October 2015.

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