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"AMONG THE WOR(L)DS": POST-SOVIET TRANSLINGUAL LITERATURE

U. M. Bakhtikireeva, O. A. Valikova

Abstract

Despite the exponential growth of transcultural/ translingual studies in recent decades, phenomenon of literary translingualism is still open to question. Specifically, it has been suggested that translingual practices in literature are equivalent to a “cultural bomb” that make minority ethnic groups forget their “names”. Translinguism is as old as the mythical Babylon itself. But if in the usual communication the translingual practices are evaluated rather positively (as the strategy of cooperation with the Other, the pledge of communicative luck), so from the point of view of the creative discourse the opinions of both writers and researchers are ambiguous. This essay is our attempt to answer the question of HOW the Russian language is perceived by translingual writers of the former Soviet Union. Russian-language literature is a special domain of post-Soviet culture, formed by writers of different nationalities, whose primary language is not Russian. Drawing on data from poetic discourse (including literary works by O. Suleymenov, A. Zhaksylykov, A. Kim, E. Zeifert and others), we try to show the ways of language contamination in an artistic text that affect not only the level of linguistic adaptations (phonetic aberrations, lexical hybrids and etc.), but poetic structures (the architectonics of the text, its composition), which determines the author's scenario thinking and its ethnic/transcultural manifestations. On the basis of the data obtained in the interviews conducted with these writers, as well as the results of linguopoetics analysis of a body of the works, we came to the conclusion, that the Russian language is regarded rather as a "communicative bridge" than a "cultural bomb" (which does not preclude the emergence in the art texts of most authors the motives of existential loneliness, ethnic scarcity etc.). Moreover, translingual literature having a high coefficient of resonance in Russian culture, contributes to the stabilization of tolerant moods in society.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2017/62/S27.047

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