Linguistic Capital and Its Transformation in the History of Russian in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Standard language is conceptualized as linguistic capital, in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology. The Twentieth century in Russia was an epoch of revolutions; linguistic developments in revolutionary and post-revolutionary situations may be efficiently analyzed as transformations of linguistic capital: the old linguistic capital is discredited in the course of a cultural revolution and revolutionary linguistic usage becomes new linguistic capital. This process is characterized in Russia (from 1910 through to the 1920s and again in the 1980s and 1990s) by the extensive use of borrowings, vulgar and jargon words, obscene expressions. The end of cultural revolutions is accompanied by the emergence of a new elite and by partial restoration of the old linguistic capital; it is appropriated by the new elite and adjusted to their demands. The article describes two cycles of these developments in the period from 1917 up to the present.