Journal article

Publication year: 2018

Pages: 137-158

Journal: Russian Linguistics

Volume number: 42

Issue number: 2

ISSN: 0304-3487

eISSN: 1572-8714

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-018-9191-y

Publisher: Springer

Abstract: 
The Russian 'correction of the books' resulted from the growing distance between Church Slavonic and the further developing East Slavic vernacular which led to numerous linguistic defects in the manually copied authoritative texts. From a philological point of view this development is understandable, but from a culturological point of view it is puzzling, as the Russian efforts at correcting manually copied texts coincided with the introduction of book printing in Western Europe. In Western Europe the transformation of hand written texts into printed ones became a commercial business and resulted in language standardization, the reduction of production costs and an increase in the number of customers. In Russia the 'correction of the books' could have been used to introduce this new technique, but on the contrary, book printing was demoted, icon devotion promoted and the greatest manuscript collections ever were inaugurated. In the end, book printing was introduced, but for clerical and governmental purposes and not for everyday business purposes. Identifying all possible factors that influenced the Russian approach to book printing is a task that is far beyond the scope of a single essay. The present paper instead is devoted to analyzing different aspects of the medium in order to present a broader picture of the development of the Russian language.

Harvard Citation style: Daiber, T. (2018) In contact with the medium: 'kniznaja sprava' in 16th-century Russia, Russian Linguistics, 42(2), pp. 137-158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-018-9191-y

APA Citation style: Daiber, T. (2018). In contact with the medium: 'kniznaja sprava' in 16th-century Russia. Russian Linguistics. 42(2), 137-158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-018-9191-y