The language of Sovereign decrees and charters of Peter I concerning Mazepa (1708)

The article examines the language of five official texts of 1708 - two royal decrees and three charters - pertaining to a pivotal event for Peter I: the defection of Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host Ivan S. Mazepa to the side of Charles XII, the King of Sweden and Russia's adversary in the Great Northern War. The analysis highlights the high rhetorical pathos, publicists nature, and overt ideological and propagandistic character of these documents. The study describes the linguistic means that shape the persuasive properties of these texts. It scrutinizes the negative evaluative epithets applied to Mazepa (such as “thief,” “traitor," “cursed/apostate traitor”), which are consistent across all five documents, as well as the contextual environment designed to amplify their inherent negative connotations. The author notes the deliberate lexical and grammatical Slavicization in several decrees as a technique to enhance the didactic function of the sovereign's document and to endow it with the authority of a bookish, high-style text. Special attention is paid to Peter I's personal decree of November 12, 1708, “On the Anathematization of the Little Russian Hetman Mazepa for Treason..”, in which lexical means (ceremonial titling of monarchs, religious terminology and phraseology, and compound words) imbue the official text, which inherently serves informative and imperative functions, with a profoundly didactic tone. It is emphasized that the royal decrees of the the Petrine era extensively appropriate the educational, edifying, and persuasive functions characteristic primarily of religious texts. The article also notes the relatively limited number of lexical borrowings and the predominantly vernacular style of these texts, which were aimed at ensuring the accessibility of the decrees and charters to people of all social estates.

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