ეპოქა, იდეოლოგია და ლექსიკონები
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Date
2024-01-08
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ივანე ჯავახიშვილის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის გამომცემლობა
Abstract
It is common knowledge that the change of vocabulary, maybe
influenced by a number of factors among them we should first of all
mention the influence of the prevailing ideology of the particular
country. If the state is totalitarian, all the spheres of life are under its
control, which is reflected in the vocabulary of the language. Dictionaries
and other works compiled and published in some totalitarian states of
the last century are a visible example of this.
Linguistics of the 20th century got interested in studying the impact
of fascist ideology on human speech. This is well described by Victor
Klemperer in the book “LTI - The Language of the Third Reich. A Philologist’s
Notebook”. And after the 90s of the same century, it became
relevant to observe the lexical-grammatical features of the speech of the
inhabitants of the two Germanys; Special attention was paid to the
differences in the linguistic features (including lexical ones) in the
discourse of the same population living in the GDR and the FRG. It
became obvious how great was the influence of the Soviet ideology on
the discourse of the inhabitants of socialist GDR.
Ideology and regime influence not only speech but also public
consciousness. The novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by the
famous Czech writer Milan Kundera serves as proof of this. One of the
chapters of the book is called “Dictionary of Unintelligible Words”, where
we can see that the two main characters, Sabina and Franz, sometimes
cannot understand each other. The reason is that Sabina grew up in
socialist Czechoslovakia and France in Switzerland. For example, the
word “demonstration” for Sabina is associated with tedious advance
marches and fake celebrations, while for Franz it is a form of protest of a
free man.
German prof. Rudi Keller, an interesting researcher in this field
called the influence of ideology on the speech of humans the phenomenon
of the “invisible hand”. A similar situation was characteristic of
the countries of the socialist camp, the republics of the Soviet Union,
Georgia among them.
From the point of view of the impact of political ideology on the
lexical side of speech, the eight volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language, (1950-1965, Chief Editor prof. Arn. Chikobava)
presents a great interest. Despite the ideological pressure and the most
difficult conditions during the hard post-war years, compiling such a
dictionary was equal to scientific heroism. Its lexical base at that time
was comprehensive and reflected the lexical stock of the Georgian
language as much as possible.
Obviously, the Soviet ideology found its reflection in the given
dictionary, and it was certainly inevitable. From this point of view, several
aspects can be distinguished:
• Diverse definitions according to the views of socialist and capitalist
countries;
• A large number of words of ideological content when selecting
lexical units;
• Ideological coloring of definitions of words of political-economic,
social, philosophical and other topics;
• Propaganda of atheism and trending definition of religious words;
• The abundance of borrowed words from the Russian language:
neologisms and abbreviations characteristic of the Soviet epoch;
• Collocations and illustrative sources (Marxist-Leninist political
literature, press of that time, history of the communist party of the Soviet
Union, communist party congress resolutions...).
In the definitions of the lexical units, you can see the tendency of
demonstrating the superiority of the socialist world and the communist
ideology, the high moral portrait of a “free” Soviet person and the moralpolitical
vices of the capitalist countries are emphasized.
It is worth mentioning that the first edition of the Explanatory
Dictionary of the Georgian Language is not only a rich source of cultural
information, but also the ideological one and reflects the contradictory
Soviet years. This again emphasizes that the dictionary is a kind of the
reflection of the relevant time.
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სამეცნიერო სესია, მიძღვნილი აკადემიკოს ვარლამ თოფურიას ხსოვნისადმი, მასალები, თბილისი, 2024, გვ. 20-26 / Scientific Session Dedicated to the Memory of Academician Varlam Topuria, Proceedings, Tbilisi, 2024, pp. 20-26