Linguistic representation of the subject sphere in military charters at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries

E.M. Sheptukhina

Volgograd State University, Volgograd, 400062 Russia

E-mail: em_sheptukhina@volsu.ru

Received June 5, 2017

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Abstract

The paper discusses the linguistic des­cription of the subject sphere in military charters, the main management documents, created in the registry office of Don Host province (Oblast' Voiska Donskogo) at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries. The materials for the study have been taken from the archive of the Mikhailovsky Stanitsa Ataman Archive (State Archive of Volgograd region, fund 332, inventory 1, 158 items, 1734–1837). The term “subject sphere of the text” defines the text property to explicate the presence of the subject and its relation to reality, which is actualized through speech and textual units expressing social characteristics of the text creator, the tonality (modality), and some other categories.

The analysis of verbal realization of the subject sphere in the military charters at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries in relation to military charters of the middle and the second half of the 18th century has shown that these documents are characterized by the obligatory expression of the text subject due to their regulatory function. The subject is explicated in the initial formula. Its structural and substantial variability reflects changes in the management organization of the Don Army and states it that collegiality used to be the fundamental principle of management.

A tendency to impersonality reflected in the documents under study, objectivity of the document text has been found: legally relevant actions of the subject are expressed in passive constructions with reflexive verbs and short passive participles.

A tendency to standardization of the document text is manifested in the decrease of language means diversity that is supposed to represent the subject sphere used to create the imperative tone of the text, as well as in the loss of the ability of lexemes with local value to indicate the subject of the text.

The dynamics in the representation of the subject sphere in the military charters depends on a set of extralinguistic factors: changes in the Don Army management structures seen as a territorial unit of the Russian state and intralinguistic reasons, i.e., development of the official style of the Russian language.

Keywords: Russian language, history of Russian official language, text, subject of text, regional documents, military charter, Don Host Province

Acknowledgments. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Administration of Volgograd region (project no. 16-14-34004).

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For citation: Sheptukhina E.M. Linguistic representation of the subject sphere in military charters at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2017, vol. 159, no. 5, pp. 1175–1186. (In Russian)

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