Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Review: An Introductory Course For Heritage Learners Of Russian, Anna Geisherik

Russian Language Journal

Rodnaya rech’ is a welcome newcomer to a rather empty field of modern Russian heritage language textbooks, previously represented on the US market only by the 2002 Russian for Russians textbook by Olga Kagan, Tatiana Akishina and Richard Robin. As a long-time instructor of heritage speaker courses, I have been using a combination of some parts of Olga Kagan’s book and dozens of pages of my own materials, which came together in an overcrowded course pack in need of a major makeover. Therefore, I am very excited to see a new textbook finally hit the market.

Review: Between Rhyme And Reason: Vladimir Nabokov, Translation, And Dialogue, Brendan Nieubuurt

Russian Language Journal

An ambitious study, Between Rhyme and Reason endeavors to synthesize two lines of inquiry concerning Nabokov’s long and prodigious career as translator. First, how can we best characterize Nabokov’s method of translation, especially since most of his translations do not follow the same “literalist” approach with which the author and his notorious Eugene Onegin (1964) are so closely associated? Second, how did the act of translating other writers contribute to Nabokov’s own creative work? Stanislav Shvabrin locates the nexus of these concerns in Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism. Against the performative author’s posturing as an absolutely independent creative consciousness free of …

Review: Russian Function Words: Meaning And Use, Brendan Nieubuurt, Evelina Mendelevich

Russian Language Journal

Nabokov’s change in attitude toward Pushkin—a change from passive worshipper of Pushkin to self-assured interlocutor with him—he remains quiet about why Nabokov’s theory of translation changed so radically concerning Onegin. Shvabrin sets 1955 as the year of Nabokov’s “literalist” turn, though he makes little matter of the date itself. I wonder about the potential influence of surrounding events. Before he adopted his literalist rhetoric, which presented the translator as a meticulous scholar, Nabokov claimed that a translator must be a “creative genius” on par with the original poet. In 1955 Nabokov also published the novel that he knew to be …

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Piloting A Dynamic Assessment Model: Russian Nominal Morphology As A Building Block For L2 Listening Development, Rimma Ableeva, Olga Thomason

Russian Language Journal

Second language (L2) Russian research identifies listening comprehension as the least developed language ability among university students and points to the importance of listening instruction in Russian programs (e.g., Rifkin 2005; Comer 2012a; Isurin 2013). For example, Rifkin (2005, 11) states that students typically exhibit an “intermediate-low level of L2 listening proficiency” after completion of a 4-year Russian program. According to Isurin (2013, 39), the survey conducted among L2 Russian learners and instructors acknowledged “listening comprehension as the most problematic area in students’ language proficiency in general.” Comer (2012a) attributes poor listening ability to insufficient teaching materials and activities as …

Bridging Two Fields: Game Theory And Crime And Punishment, Sarah Matthews, Mark Purves

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many scholars have drawn on the tools of Game Theory to explore the Humanities as a whole, but have failed to make sense of the great contributions of Russian literature. In fact, the only two articles dealing with Russian literary works and Game Theory were made in 1968 and 1988. Therefore, the purpose of our project was to frame Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment through a reading of Game Theory. Approaching the novel in this light allowed us to better understand Raskolnikov’s behavior and the moral implications of his actions and the novel itself.

Using Religious Themes And Content To Affect Cultural Sensitivity In Russian Language Learning, Paul Tristan Gallo

Theses and Dissertations

Specifically oriented towards Russian culture, this study addresses the need in diplomacy for deeper cultural understanding. As research suggests a link between the inclusion of religious perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) and student motivation and cultural empathy, this study examines how Russian language classrooms could leverage an understanding of Russian religious themes to foster cultural sensitivity. The study invited 24 second-year university students of Russian to complete a previously-validated assessment of cultural sensitivity: the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI). Divided into a control and a treatment group, the participants also watched a short video depicting a story from Russian history …

Introduction

Russian Language Journal

The editorial team of Russian Language Journal is pleased to present volume 68. This issue sees five articles received through our regular blind review process, one review article, and five book reviews.

In our first section on Pedagogy and Practice, Yunusova provides a theoretical framework for assessing the appropriateness of literary texts for use in foreign language classrooms. Caffee and Lucey describe an innovative peer-to-peer experiential learning project based around foodways. Both of these articles should provide concrete and innovative ideas for Russian language classrooms.

Our second section on Linguistics, contains three articles. Soboleva tackles the thorny question of aspect, …

Defining The Accessibility Of A Literary Text: Contemporary Russian Literature In A Cefr B2 Russian As A Foreign Language Classroom, Sofya Yunusova

Russian Language Journal

In the last three and a half decades, a considerable number of publications in foreign-language methodology have addressed the use of literary texts (LTs) in foreign-language classrooms. While at the beginning of the twentieth century learning a foreign language still meant a close study of canonical LTs for linguistic and humanistic purposes following the grammar-translation method (Kramsch and Kramsch 2000; Iatsenko 2017b), by the middle of the century, literature was replaced by more functional models of learning (Carter 2007). The 1980s opened new perspectives on the didactic role of L2 literary reading, which are commonly associated with the confluence of …

Borscht, Bliny, And Burritos: The Benefits Of Peer-To-Peer Experiential Learning Through Food, Naomi Caffee, Colleen Lucey

Russian Language Journal

Like other disciplines in the humanities, Russian Studies faces an ongoing crisis of recruiting and retaining majors and minors for the longevity of undergraduate programs (Looney and Lusin 2018). Shrinking budgets and limited resources compound the problem as language and culture departments across the United States are asked to do more with fewer resources (Gerber 2015). In the context of an increasingly corporatized academy where language and cultural studies are marginalized, faculty in Russian Studies have a powerful means at their disposal to attract new students and build cross-campus alliances: the common language of food. Courses on foodways can reinvigorate …

Вторичные Имперфективы В Системе Русского Глагола В Свете Классификации Глагольных Предикатов По Вендлеру, Валентина C. Соболева

Russian Language Journal

В данной статье представлена попытка проанализировать семантические особенности вторичных имперфективов и их видо- вых коррелятов на основе классификации глагольных предикатов по Вендлеру.1 Следует отметить, что наличие в аспектологической литературе необозримого количества исследований по самым разным вопросам, касающимся функционирования категории глагольного вида в русском языке, говорит о том, что в данной области многие кардинальные проблемы остаются нерешёнными, включая как видовую парность глаголов при наличии видовых троек и одновидовых глаголов, так и семантическое содержание каждого вида.2 И, наверное, в связи с нерешённостью этих кардинальных вопросов, глаголам вторичной имперфективации не уделяется достаточного внимания, хотя некоторые исследователи отмечали «загадочное» поведение вторичных имперфективов (О. Swan, …

Cultural Differences In Russian And American Magazine Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach, Emily Furner

Russian Language Journal

Though some may think that TRANSLATION and LOCALIZATION are two words that represent the same function, many scholars make a distinction between the two terms, and some even add a third term, GLOBALIZATION, into the mix. Translator and localization specialist Bert Esselink (1998) perhaps best defined the distinctions in these terms: Globalization […] is typically used in a sales and marketing context, i.e., it is the process by which a company breaks free of the home markets to pursue business opportunities wherever their customers may be located. Translation is the process of converting written or displayed text or spoken words …

Загадки “Слинкса” (Slynx) Татьяны Толстой. Дешифровка Мифологии Романа “Кысь” В Переводах На Французский И Английский Языки, Филипп Фризон, Елена Гаврилова

Russian Language Journal

“Кысь” (фр. Le Slynx, англ. The Slynx) - первый роман Т.Н. Толстой, увидевший свет в 2000 г. Его появление не осталось незамеченным: в следующем году книга стала победителем конкурса “Лучшие издания XIV Московской международной книжной выставки- ярмарки” (г. Москва) в номинации “Проза-2001” и удостоена литературной премии “Триумф”. На французском языке “Кысь” вышла в 2002 г. в переводе с комментариями Кристофа Глоговски, на английском - в 2003 г. в переводе Джейми Гэмбрелл, без комментариев, но с перечнем цитат в приложении. Предметом рассмотрения настоящей статьи стали именно иронические и фольклорные моменты повествования и подход французского и английского переводчиков в их стремлении передать …

Cherchez La Femme! Cherchez Laura A. Janda!, Michal Korenar

Russian Language Journal

In The Mohicans of Paris (1871), Dumas’s detective concludes at some point that a woman was necessarily involved in an investigated crime, leading him to famously exclaim: “Cherchez la femme!”, which is translated to English as “Look for the woman!” (Horn, 1991). One does not need to be an actual detective to reveal the purpose of the reviewed book Each Venture a New Beginning: Studies in Honor of Laura A. Janda. Needless to say, I do not want to imply in any way that Janda has committed a crime. Still, I find the expression rather apposite because the reader can …

Review: A Convenient Territory: Russian Literature At The Edge Of Modernity, Joe Peschio

Russian Language Journal

The Festschrift is an odd, performative genre, and it tends to comprise loose collections of gestures—gestures of gratitude, gestures of respect, gestures of celebration. Not so with this Festschrift. With only a few exceptions, the works here are very form- and literature-centric, something as rare these days as it is welcome. This is as good a reflection as any of the honoree’s place in our field. As the astonishing bibliography of Barry Scherr’s works at the end of the book attests, he has been a strong force in formal analysis, poetics, exact methods, and, in general, empirically minded literary scholarship …

Review: Studies In Phonological Theory And Historical Linguistics, James Joshua Pennington

Russian Language Journal

This volume represents a definitive collection of Bill Darden’s research over his career of more than forty years as a linguist. The book is divided along his main areas of expertise into two parts: (1) “Historical Linguistics,” consisting of 17 chapters that cover a variety of problematic issues in Indo-European, Balto-Slavic, and Slavic historical phonology, morphology, and syntax; and (2) “Phonological Theory,” comprising 10 articles, which illustrate Darden’s approach to tackling difficult issues in phonological theory through examples from Russian and Greenlandic.

Review: Limits To Interpretation: The Meanings Of Anna Karenina; Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Serenity Stanton Orengo, Alla A. Smyslova

Russian Language Journal

Limits to Interpretation is a staple of Tolstoy scholarship. Newly reprinted in paperback, it is worth revisiting, even for those already familiar with this work. Alexandrov’s aim in the book, outlined on the first page, is to “propose a text-specific reading methodology, one that is tailored as much as possible to a particular work, and that is thus designed to minimize the circularity of interpretation, or the process of mediation, inherent in any act of reading” (3). Alexandrov seeks to demonstrate how a work of literature can prompt a fixed range of contradictory and divergent interpretations simultaneously. He wants to …

Review: Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Alla A. Smyslova, Alexandra Portice

Russian Language Journal

Anindita Banerjee’s critical reader provides excellent insight into the development of science fiction literature and cinema in Russia from the early nineteenth century all the way to the mid-2000s. The book features four sections, each of them comprising four articles by different authors, and an introduction from the editor. The latter provides a brief but brilliant overview of Russian nauchnaia fantastika, or “scientific fantasy,” positioning it within the context of literary, social, and scientific life in the USSR, as well as outlining the existing scholarship on the topic. From the very beginning, when the genre first emerged at the turn …

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Generational Attitudes Reflected Through Soviet Socialist Realism, Kelsey Herdman, Tony Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In his biography “Raising the Banner” artist Geli Korzhev, a Socialist Realist artist, believes that Socialist Realism should have been titled as “social realism”; that “socialism is associated with politics but it should be aimed at social issues,” and that “truth is a means to learn reality.”1 By studying Socialist Realism we see more than just the politics that governed the USSR between the 1940s leading up to its collapse in 1991. My original intent for writing this paper was to show the generational attitudes reflected through Socialist Realism, by comparing how the topics of the pieces changed over time. …

Rediscovering Olga Wisinger-Florian, Nancy Eyre, Michelle James

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The project Rediscovering Olga Wisinger-Florian culminated in the compilation of an online bibliography of secondary texts about the Austrian artist Olga Wisinger-Florian combined with a biography and catalogue of visual works by the artist published in The Sophie Digital Library (http://sophie.byu.edu). This will make it possible for scholars, students, educators, and the art community around the world to have access to Olga Wisinger-Florian’s work.

Introduction

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching A Russian Media Course Based On The Theory Of Multiliteracies Pedagogy, Andrea Liebschner

Russian Language Journal

This paper is intended to provide a pedagogical framework for specific choices that instructors can make about tasks and their relationship to course goals for teaching a Russian media course to non-native speakers of Russian. The course materials involve work with literary texts, television, and the Internet. This paper first considers the New London Group’s (1996) theory of multiliteracies to build a fitting pedagogical framework for working with different types of media and communication channels in a Russian media course outside of Russia. The paper then provides an overview of existing courses about Russian media. Finally, it analyzes in detail …

The Development Of Syntactic Complexity In The Writing Of Russian Language Learners: A Longitudinal Corpus Study, Olesya V. Kisselev, Anna A. Alsufieva

Russian Language Journal

To make inferences about how second language (L2) learners develop over time, most Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research has traditionally relied on cross-sectional one-time sampling design, in which data collected from different groups of learners at different levels of language proficiency are compared against a preestablished set of measures. Rarer are longitudinal studies, in which researchers track a small number of participants over a relatively long period of time. Recent developments in technology and the rise of the language corpora have made it possible to combine the benefits of these two approaches; longitudinal LEARNER LANGUAGE CORPORA, large databases collected continuously …

What Makes Russian Advertisements Russian? Contemporary Russian Advertising As A Sociocultural Phenomenon, Valentina Iepuri

Russian Language Journal

It is common knowledge that advertisements reflect society. They play an important role in the formation of stereotypes and impose a certain way of life and a certain system of values. By analyzing both the foreground and the background of advertisements as texts, it is possible to reveal not only their primary sales messages but also the embedded social and cultural ones (Frith 1997, 3).

Sociocultural, anthropological, and psychological aspects of Russian advertising and various forms of its impact on public consciousness, morality, and public taste require special attention and research, especially now that advertising has become an integral part …

Review: Mezhdu Nami, Jim Sweigert

Russian Language Journal

Между нами marks a new and quite remarkable approach to the teaching and learning of Russian. In place of the typical print textbook series is an online text that also incorporates some aspects of more traditional Russian language textbooks. Indeed, this is perhaps the first time that a Russian language textbook for the North American market has provided students with an entry point that is nearly entirely in an online format. As the authors state, “Между нами is a free, web-based textbook that provides a comprehensive introduction to Russian language and culture. It is organized around the experiences of four …

Review: Panorama: Intermediate Russian Language And Culture, Jim Sweigert, Irina Six

Russian Language Journal

Every time a new Russian textbook is released, it raises similar expectations among both experienced and new teachers: Would this textbook make my teaching life easier? The hope is even more anxious when the textbook is designed to help students move from intermediate to advanced proficiency, a challenging task that needs more published teaching materials. Panorama is a textbook meant to respond to this market need.

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Literary Texts In The Undergraduate Russian Curriculum: Leveraging Language Learning And Literary Discussion Through Scaffolding, William J. Comer

Russian Language Journal

In this article, I want to summarize the broader discussion about literary texts in the undergraduate curriculum for the more commonly taught languages, consider the nature of Russian undergraduate programs in light of that discussion, and then suggest a way that upper-division Russian classes can work with literary texts through the effective deployment of scaffolding in classroom tasks.

Using Blogs In A Heritage Russian Classroom, Julia Titus

Russian Language Journal

Over the recent years blogging has become an increasingly frequent component in an academic setting, making appearances anywhere from English writing courses to foreign language classes. Research assessing the usefulness of blogs as a learning tool (Warschauer 2010; Murray, Hourigan, and Jeanneau 2007; Lee 2011; Bloch 2007) confirms that the blog format may offer many unique advantages, such as giving the learner a central role in the learning process; allowing the learner to practice writing on topics important to the him or her and fostering self-expression; creating meaningful and authentic context; extending learning beyond the classroom; developing self-reflection; viewing writing …