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
3 - Language Use Among the Russian Aristocracy: The Case of the Counts Stroganov
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
Many Russian aristocrats had a command of several foreign languages. Knowledge of languages – above all French, in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries – played an enormous part in their lives: in their studies, in their social life within the family and beyond it, in the composition of ego-documents and so forth. Examination of the ‘linguistic behaviour’ of the upper stratum of the Russian nobility in the period when French was an international language in Europe and when the aristocracy presented itself as in many respects a cosmopolitan group will help us to see in what ways linguistic processes in Russia were similar to those that we may observe in other parts of Europe and in what ways they were different. We do not yet have many accurate studies of this subject that are based on large volumes of sources, but a recent survey shows that although pan- European processes were at work the situation does differ considerably from one country to another (Rjéoutski et al. 2014).
Choice of languages for study and for social intercourse in the families of the aristocracy might be regarded as a type of adherence to pan- European fashion. Indeed, adherence to models of linguistic behaviour that had become firmly established may explain the relative infrequency of metalinguistic commentary among the Russian aristocracy. However, while ‘the fashion for languages’ undoubtedly played an important role, adherence to models of upbringing among the higher nobility was, as a rule, a conscious process – it is no accident that the families of high society have left us many an ‘education plan’ (plan d’éducation). We should therefore probably assume a certain degree of reflection about the benefits that command of one language or another might confer or, to put it in Pierre Bourdieu's terms, the ‘cultural capital’ which this or that language possessed in the imagination of Russian aristocrats. Mastery of one language or another, we believe, may be part of the process of creating ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991).
- Type
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- Information
- French and Russian in Imperial RussiaLanguage Use among the Russian Elite, pp. 61 - 83Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015