Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
12 - The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on Dates, Transliteration and Other Editorial Practices
- Abbreviations Used in the Text, Notes and References
- Dates of Reigns in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russia
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 French and Russian in Catherine's Russia
- 2 The Use of French by Catherine II in her Letters to Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1774–96)
- 3 Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
- 4 The Francophone Press in Russia: A Cultural Bridge and an Instrument of Propaganda
- 5 Russian Noblewomen's Francophone Travel Narratives (1777–1848): The Limits of the Use of French
- 6 Russian or French? Bilingualism in Aleksandr Radishchev's Letters from Exile (1790–1800)
- 7 Code-Switching in the Correspondence of the Vorontsov Family
- 8 French and Russian in Ego-Documents by Nikolai Karamzin
- 9 Pushkin's Letters in French
- 10 Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Coquetry: Learning about Fashion and Speaking its Language
- 11 The Role of French in the Formation of Professional Architectural Terminology in Eighteenth-Century Russia
- 12 The Coexistence of Russian and French in Russia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century: Bilingualism with or without Diglossia?
- Conclusion
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
The linguistic situation in Russian intellectual society at the beginning of the nineteenth century is markedly heterogeneous, with a number of foreign languages (French, German, Latin, Italian, English) being used, as well as Russian. In this multilingual environment, French, which had begun to be used in Russian noble society in the eighteenth century, played a prominent role. During the process of intensive engagement with Western Europe started by Peter the Great, French had become not only a language of communication with Europe and the medium of cultural transfer which was used to introduce European culture and literature to Russia, but also a language used by Russians to communicate with one another. French attained its position thanks to a number of factors: there were practical considerations (French was Europe's main diplomatic language, for instance); French culture was predominant all over Europe; and, last but not least, French was considered a precise, balanced and clear language and thus deemed the ideal instrument for communication. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the use of the French language in Russia was well established, as the rich holdings of extant archival sources in French testify. Even significant political developments such as the French invasion of Russia by Napoleon in 1812 did not stop the use of French. In certain settings French was prescribed by etiquette, as we shall show.
But does the fact that French was prescribed by etiquette and that it was used in particular situations mean that Franco-Russian bilingualism amounted to a diglossic situation, in which the two languages had strictly separate functions? Iurii Lotman (1994: 354) invokes the notion of diglossia when he speaks of the phenomenon of cultural bilingualism in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He lists certain domains of cultural life in Russia which required the use of the French language and French literary models. However, it has been shown that the separation of languages for particular genres and situations was not as rigid as suggested by Lotman (Marrese 2010: 719–21) and needs further evaluation.
- Type
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- Information
- French and Russian in Imperial RussiaLanguage Use among the Russian Elite, pp. 228 - 242Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015