Language Contacting of Rusins in the Works by Alexander Dukhnovich

The article analyzes language contacting of Rusins with representatives of other Slavic (Russians, Serbs, Slovaks) and non-Slavic (Germans, Hungarians) peoples, as reflected in the works by the Rusin enlightener Alexander Vasilievich Dukhnovich (18031865). The author argues that the language interactions in pedagogical (“A Reader for Beginners”, “Abridged Grammar of the Written Russian language”) and historiographic works (“The True History of the Carpatho-Ross or the Ugric Rusins”) of this precedent author are expressed as verbalized and non-verbalized communication acts mediating the perception of the texts by the reading audience. The nominations of Rusin-foreign language contacting in the works under analysis are accompanied either by specifying descriptions of historical and cultural facts without individual (positive or negative) evaluations, or by negative and neutral commentary expressing the author's attitude to a particular language and / or its speakers. On the non-verbal level, A. Dukhnovich's views and communicative attitudes to Rusins' language contacts with other nations are manifested in the form of editorial changes in reprints of “A Reader for Beginners” in 1847 and 1850, for example, as in the case of excluding Hungarian text fragments. The author concludes that the reflexive intentions of A. Dukhnovich in relation to language contacting of Rusins can influence the readers' response to his pedagogical and historiographic works due to the exceptional importance of the author's personality for representatives of the Rusin cultural and linguistic community. They can also mediate the emergence of negative and positive attitudes towards other peoples and languages in the national picture of the world.

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