Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Dear colleagues, our authors and readers!

The theme of this issue of the journal is precedentiality as a special property of a text to illuminate other texts that are present in it by explicit or hidden quotation or just as a hint. Illuminated texts create a special – not superficial – layer of semantics that connects the text with culture in the broadest sense and creates an important background for the perception of its main content and at the same time characterizes the author.

The first time precedent texts precisely as a characteristic of a linguistic personality were brought to attention in the famous book by Yuri Nikolaevich Karaulov “Russian Language and Linguistic Personality” (Moscow, 1987). Since then, the theory of precedentiality has been formed, in particular, not only texts, but also situations, phenomena, and persons are considered as precedent; the ways of their presence in texts are identified; a lot of texts have been studied in terms of their precedentiality. Overall, in the database of the Russian Science Citation Index, there are more than 2,700 publications with the term precedent in the title.

Nevertheless, no one can say that the topic of precedentiality has been exhausted or has lost its relevance; on the contrary, each new text analyzed in this regard reveals not only something new about texts of this type, but also about the very phenomenon of precedents in terms of their manifestation and its stylistic effect. This is confirmed by the articles that make up this issue of the journal.

The section “Precedent in Poetic Texts” brings together articles in which the object of study is poetic texts, but these are not classical poetry, but texts of Russian rock and rap. Yulia Vasilievna Shchurina and her student Maria Bayushkina from Chita undertook the experiment of reading the songs of Gleb Samoilov, showing a wide range of precedent texts of his songs. And in my article about Russian rap, the precedent world created by comics culture is discussed. Of course, this world is not so indicative for all Russian rappers, but there are enough facts to talk about the significance of this world and how differently it is illuminated in rap texts — either as a basis for a comparison, or acquiring a text-forming role.

Completely different texts — from the urban environment — are analyzed in the articles of the second section “Precedent in Urban Names and Advertising”. When considering modern advertising, which was undertaken by Maria Viktorovna Terskikh, it turns out that there is unexpectedly a lot of Soviet precedent texts and visual elements. In the article by Tatyana Petrovna Sokolova, a lot of Moscow names are presented, special attention is paid to the name Karlsson, which turns out to be the name of various city institutions, referring to the work of the Swedish children's writer and at the same time (and perhaps above all) to the famous Soviet cartoon, realizing in different ways its precedentiality. This work convincingly shows the dependence of precedentiality on the knowledge of the addressee: the experiment convinces that the name-giver’s intention does not always coincide with the understanding of the citizen-reader.

Among the works that Tatyana Petrovna refers to, one cannot help but notice her joint-authored articles with Elena Nikolaevna Remchukova, whose life was cut short in February of this year. Elena Nikolaevna paid a lot of attention to the problem of precedentiality; other authors of this issue also refer to her works. We would like to dedicate this issue of the journal to the memory of Elena Nikolaevna.

Media texts, more precisely, their headlines, are the object of attention of our young authors, which unites them in the “Young Voices” section. Olga Navolotskaya studied the headlines of the Kommersant newspaper, Natalya Klimkova — the German magazine der Spiegel, and they share a commitment to a deep reading of the headlines, allowing to see in it not only an indication of a current event, but also a precedential background, allowing to see its scale and significance against the backdrop of national culture or, as Olga Navolotskaya poses the problem, media world picture.

The issue ends with a review by Victoria Genrikhovna Didkovskaya of the dictionary of our St. Petersburg colleagues from Herzen University. This is an interesting experiment in the lexicography of precedentiality, presenting words and expressions whose source is children's literature.

When the issue was almost ready, news came that Valentina Danilovna Chernyak, a professor at Herzen University, who had been the head of the Russian language department there for many years, had passed away. And this review becomes, above all, a sign of our grateful memory of Valentina Danilovna, one of the authors and the executive editor of the dictionary. Her contribution to Russian linguistics is going to be appreciated, and we could note that Valentina Danilovna published an article in the first issue of our journal, supporting it at the start.

Thus, this issue offered to your attention presents a kind of panorama of precedents of different types in modern texts — from poetic to media ones, which convinces: this property, common to all texts, is realized differently depending on a number of facts — from the type of text and the author to the context in which the events described in the text are perceived. This variety of manifestations of precedents serves as a guarantee that their study never ceases to attract linguists, and the results of published research will contribute to the formation of a picture of the precedent of modern texts. In addition, the issue demonstrates that, along with the research approach, a lexicographic approach is being developed, which makes it possible to systematically describe precedent texts with a single source.

It is worth saying that the geography of this issue goes beyond the North-West: together with Novgorod and Petrozavodsk authors, linguists from Moscow, Omsk and Chita publish their articles, which indicates the breadth of space where precedents attract the attention of researchers.

I sincerely thank the authors of the issue and reviewers — Doctors of Philology Tatyana Gennadievna Nikitina from Pskov University, Novgorod colleagues Vladimir Ivanovich Zaika and Victoria Genrikhovna Didkovskaya, as well as Candidate of Philological Sciences Vladlen Ivanovich Makarov.

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

T. V. Shmeleva