New rules of Russian orthography: the view of expert philologists from the position of objection
Keywords:
spelling reform, Russian spelling, objection, media communication, speech representationAbstract
The article is devoted to the expression of the collective opinion of the Russian expert philological community on the appearance in early November 2021 of news about the project of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation “On the approval of the basic rules of Russian spelling” and to the broadcast of this opinion to the audience. The immediate reaction of the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences led to an acute discussion about changes in the spelling of the Russian language with an avalanche-like increase in discussion in the network space. Media reports played a special role in shaping the poles of discussion: on the one hand, the need for changes was noted, on the other hand, concerns were expressed about their redundancy. The comments of spelling experts are examined not from the point of view of formal organization (communicative scenario), but in relation to the plan of expression (grammatical design of speech actions) and the content of statements. The study revealed the following characteristics of the media representation of this situation: 1. The official response of the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences is saturated with various verbal ways of expressing the denial of the Project. 2. The manifestation of subjective modality in the statements of experts varies from neutrality aimed at expressing objections to the imperativeness of the proposed Project, to the presence in the text of a pronounced emotional response to an informational occasion, which is expressed in a large number of questions (N. V. Nikolenkova) and the significant presence in the text of syntactic constructions with the personal pronoun “I” and the particle “would” (M. A. Krongauz). In addition, it is noted that the replicas of other philologists are also divided into neutral and expressively colored. The observations made demonstrate the existence of a conflict between the official and professional points of view on spelling issues. The expression of this conflict is the speech techniques of expressing objections related to the professional self-consciousness of Russian philologists.
Acknowledgements: The study was carried out with the financial support of the grant of the Russian Sciences Foundation 22-18-00184 “Speech practices of objections and ways to overcome them in popular science media communication”.
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