Language, Time and Linguistic Dystopia
Language, Time and Linguistic Dystopia
Tat’iana Tolstaia and Evgenii Vodolazkin
This chapter explores how Russian prose writers create fictional representations of a past, or a future, where language emerges as an essential theme. It offers close readings of two works, one portraying a fictional future for Russian – Tat’iana Tolstaia’s 2000 novel Kys’ (The Slynx), and one diving into the language’s past – Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Lavr (Laurus, 2012). The analysis shows how both authors challenge the standard language by stretching its potential and including a wealth of elements taken from non-standard varieties and older forms. Whereas Tolstaia’s novel depicts a brutal, destructive world of linguistic dystopia with, or so it would seem, no real past and no future, Vodolazkin’s text presents a smoothly created linguistic amalgam characterised by flexibility and multifunctionality. The chapter discusses the linguistic attitudes implied in the two approaches and their relevance to the post-Soviet language debates.
Keywords: post-Soviet language culture, sociolinguistic change, language ideologies, language debate, Tat’iana Tolstaia, Evgenii Vodolazkin, post-Soviet Russian prose
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