Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Dear colleagues, our authors and readers!

This issue of the journal is dedicated to regionally specific words, or, if we talk about linguistic disciplines, regionalistics.

The term regionalistika ‘regionalistics’, which has become widespread in domestic humanities since the second half of the 2000s, judging by the Russian Science Citation Index data, is actively used in economic geography, political science, history, pedagogy, competing with such terms, meaning ‘reginal studies’, as regionovedeniye, regionologiya, krayevedeniye, as well as descriptive expressions such as territorial'nyye, regional'nyye issledovaniya, regional'nyye aspekty, etc. Indicative in this regard is the existence of the Regionalistica journal in Khabarovsk and Pskov Journal of Regional Studies, published since 2011.

Naturally, philology has not remained aloof from this trend, as evidenced by the presence of the Tambov journal Philological Regional Science published in 2009–2020, as well as articles using the term in their titles in combination with the adjectives literaturnaya ‘literary’, lingvisticheskaya ‘linguistic’, mediynaya ‘media’, leksikograficheskaya ‘lexicographical’, antroponimnaya ‘anthroponymic’...

Considering the wider range of articles related to regional linguistic research, we can say that the term linguistic regionalistics turns out to be an “umbrella” one, combining classical dialectology, the study of the language of the city, including urban onomastics, and the practice of describing regionally marked vocabulary in dictionaries. In this regard, we can say that our issue of the journal represents different aspects of linguistic regional studies.

It opens with the REGIONAL IN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE HISTORY part that includes the article South-Western vocabulary in the Russian language of the 18th century by our colleagues from Petrozavodsk — Natalya V. Patroeva and Alexander A. Lebedev. In the article, regional vocabulary is shown in the reflection of two mirrors — the dictionary of the era and the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The data presented show how complex the paths to the formation of the national vocabulary and the fate of individual words are.

In the REGIONALLY SPECIFIC WORDS OF URBAN LINGUISTIC LIFE part, two articles present the linguistic life of cities, if by this metaphorical designation we mean both the spoken language of the people and the signs, without which it is impossible to imagine the modern urban landscape. Different segments of the language of two far from each other cities — Kaliningrad and Krasnoyarsk — are examined from specific angles and present interesting aspects of their culture and the linguistic tastes of the people.

The article by Ekaterina V. Zubritskaya and Tatyana M. Shkapenko Representation of local identity in Kaliningrad linguistic landscape shows how city onyms reflect the historical fate of the city. It must be said that the former of the authors defends her PhD thesis in June, and the latter is her scientific advisor, so we have a fresh perspective on the facts of urban onomastics.

Elena V. Osetrova’s article Evaluations of everyday life in Krasnoyarsk residents’ speech is devoted to the analysis of one type of statements in the spoken language of city residents; it reveals the specifics of such sentences and their Siberian features.

The APPLIED REGIONALISTICS part unites articles based on material from different regions and specific Pskov names. The article by famous lexicographers Tatyana G. Nikitina and Elena I. Rogaleva Pskov ecclesionyms in educational dictionaries discusses the problem of describing church names for young dictionary readers. The article by Irina V. Fufaeva from Moscow Our own words: participation of schoolchildren volunteers in collecting regional language material offers information on how to involve such young linguists in collecting regional vocabulary.

The YOUNG VOICES part presents an article by Novgorod State University master’s student Yulia Andreeva Novgorod names for non-adult pets, based on an understanding of the materials of the Novgorod Regional Dictionary. As befits a young researcher, in the theoretical part of the article, Yulia provides data on the relationship between regional studies and dialectology, which is important in the context of our issue. The touching lexemes analyzed in the article show how much interesting is hidden in the dialect material, which, even if collected, awaits linguistic interpretations.

So, the articles discuss regionally specific words in history and modernity, the Novgorod region, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Pskov. The authors of this issue represent universities in Moscow, Pskov, Petrozavodsk, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk and Veliky Novgorod.

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 G. Nikitina from Pskov University and Novgorod colleagues — Doctors of Philology Victoria G. Didkovskaya and Valery L. Vasiliev.

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

T. V. Shmeleva