Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Dear colleagues, our authors and readers!

The theme of this issue of the journal is stylistics. Among the limitless variety of topics discussed within this linguistic discipline, the authors of the issue focused on both theoretical and practical problems.

The Stylistics Theory section includes articles by professors of Moscow and Novgorod universities Olga Grigorievna Revzina and Vladimir Ivanovich Zaika. The former discusses the key concept of stylistics — style, against a broad theoretical background, starting with the terminological designation of this concept and ending with its interpretation in the newest directions of stylistics, in particular, cognitive poetics. The latter article offers reflections on such important stylistic phenomena as mistake and technique. It would be rash to say that the articles put an end to the problems discussed, but there is every reason to say that they contain a lot of interesting facts and opinions, highlight important aspects of the problems, which indicates the theoretical significance of the articles.

The articles in the second section — Practical Stylistics — offer solutions to truly practical questions of modern speech practice: is it possible to say kasayemo etoy situatsii ‘with regard to this situation’? Which is correct — predostavit’ or predstavit’ dokumenty ‘to submit documents’? These questions, if not faced by many of us, were certainly asked by native speakers who were confident that a linguist could answer any question right away. Articles by Olga Igorevna Severskaya from the V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Olga Vladimirovna Kukushkina with Irina Vladimirovna Galaktionova from Moscow State University convince that even popular questions require taking into account a large number of facts, the practice of using “problem” words, which is reflected, in particular, by the National Corpus of the Russian Language , searching for a solution that would meet both modern linguistic tastes and the requirements of semantics and the logic of the historical development of the language. I think that the articles in this section will be of interest to a wide range of readers who care about the stylistic correctness of their speech.

In the Young Voices section, there is an article by a really young candidate of philological sciences from the V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anna Razifovna Pestova, who discusses the principles of reflecting the stylistics of a word in an explanatory dictionary. Presenting a series of words with different stylistics, the author demonstrates both the diversity of their stylistic marks in dictionaries and the logic that modern lexicographers adhere to in selecting such marks. By the way, despite her youth, our young author is authoritative, as evidenced by references to her works by other authors in the issue.

The issue of the journal ends with a review of the fundamental collective work of stylists from the Slavic countries, recently published by the Flinta publishing house. The state of Slavic stylistics with different histories, including young ones, such as the Lusatian-Sorbian languages, different interpretations of the facts of modern speech practice in the stylistic aspect, even the practice of terminological designation of stylistic phenomena - all these are fascinating subjects, and often unexpected, as I was convinced while working on this review. It seems to me that the collective monograph will become a reference book for stylists, and not only that, since Slavic stylistics reflect the latest trends in linguistics, combining them with national stylistic traditions.

Thus, in this issue of the journal, stylistics appears in its timeless theoretical problems, acute practical issues and a deep understanding of its development in the Slavic countries.

It is worth saying that the geography of this issue is not very broad; it turned out to be Moscow-Novgorod, which seems symbolic against the backdrop of the complex relations between our cities in history. I cannot but emphasize that the community of university and academic linguists that we value so much is represented in this issue of the journal as well.

I sincerely thank all the authors of the issue — both those who have been published in our journal more than once, and debutants who, we hope, will become our regular authors. Special thanks to the reviewers — Doctor of Philology Tatyana Gennadievna Nikitina from Pskov University and Novgorod colleagues — Doctors of Philology Vladimir Ivanovich Zaika and Victoria Genrikhovna Didkovskaya and Candidate of Philology Vladlen Ivanovich Makarov.

Until we meet again on the electronic pages of our journal!

T. V. Shmeleva