Sociolects in the mirror of lexicography

The paper reviews the jargon dictionaries of the Russian language within the typology the author suggested. The dictionaries are divided into small (fewer than 500 items), medium (500-3000 items), and large (over 3000 items) Small sociolect dictionaries of the beginning of the 20th century describe Russian thieves argot (''Босяцкий словарь'' (''Bosyatsky Slovar'', The Vagabond Dictionary), 1903; pocket dictionaries for the militia in the 1950s-1970s). Dictionaries of the end of the 1980s describe youth jargon (A.S. Zapesotsky, A.P. Fay, F.I. Rozhansky, V. Lurie, etc.). Post-perestroika dictionaries show the tendency to filiation of jargonism semantics, to recording idioms, and to providing contexts illustrating the meaning of words and expressions. An example of a medium dictionary is V.F. Trakhtenberg's ''Блатная музыка'' (''Blatnaya Muzyka'', the Music of the Criminal World) reflecting the argot of the late 19th — early 20th century. Modern dictionaries are published both in Russia and abroad. They are dictionaries of lingo (A. Skachinsky; V. Bykov; M.A. Grachev), of the argot of criminals and prisoners (A. Piriev), of the argot of the GULAG (B. Ben-Jacob), of city jargon (M.M. and B.P. Krestinsky), of regional youth jargon (Voronezh, Pskov, Magnitogorsk), of social group jargon (drug addicts, military people, footballers, schoolchildren and students). Large dictionaries are collections of the argot of broad space and time limits. They can be collections of regional or social group materials. These are the dictionaries of the Russian thieves' jargon (D.S. Baldaev, O.B. Khomenko), the Dictionary of the Thousand-Year-Old Russian Argot (M.A. Grachev), the Dictionary of Moscow Argot and the Dictionary of Russian Argot (V.S. Yelistratov), the Dictionary of Russian Youth Slang (T.G. Nikitina), the Dictionary of Magnitogorsk Youth Jargon (B.B. Maksimov), the Unabridged Dictionary of Russian Jargon (V.M. Mokienko, T.G. Nikitina), and other. There are also bilingual slang dictionaries. Argot, slang and jargon words become parts of dictionaries of other types, e.g., modern dictionaries of Russian invective and colloquial words. The study and lexicographical description of Russian sociolects show that for 150 years they were steadily developing from secret languages and argots of closed social groups to youth jargon - the main source of modern speech and literary language innovation. Still, some problems in this field are still unsolved, such as compiling of dictionaries that represent material in the form of synonymic groups or ideographic fields. They will further help create the onomasiological picture of the world reflected in the Russian sub-standard. A crucial task is to compile a fundamental etymological dictionary of the Russian sub-standard. Such a resource will allow to learn the connections of Russian jargon with other languages, and the routes of traditional European jargons in Russia and out of it. The comparison will help to see the relations between ''Mine'' and ''Other'' in the system of Russian sociolects, describe their spacial and chronological hierarchy, and predict their further development.

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