Linguistic rhetoric of Soviet discourse: official vs personal register (J. Stalin – A. Dovzhenko)

Within the conception of the Sochi Linguistic & Rhetorical School the paper discusses the diglossia of the Soviet discourse employed in the former USSR, distinguishes official and personal registers as well as shows their difference drawing on Joseph Stalin’s speech of 31 January 1944 to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks concerning Alexander Dovzhenko’s screenplay “Ukraine in Flames” and in the writer’s diaries. The comparison reveals a few specific linguistic rhetorical features of cognitive communicative type ontologically characteristic of the Soviet linguistic personality’s communicative cognitive activity in a totalitarian state. The cognitive features of Stalin’s individual discourse representing the official register and his system of argumentation rest on the significative component of linguistic units, arguments from literature to illustrate the postulates and dogmas of Marxist-Leninist doctrine forming the foundation of the Soviet discourse. It is also found that the official register represented by Stalin’s speech is characterized by the following features: 1) repetition; 2) sarcastic remarks; 3) dramatic mutually exclusive contrast of mental spaces (“our own, true in the last resort” and destructed, represented by the opponent’s discourse); 4) rigidly adversarial characteristic of the alternative linguistic rhetorical worldview; 5) appeal to the Soviet collective linguistic personality’s opinion; 6) ideological translation from one subdiscourse into the other, from personal register into the official one; 7) biased retelling of the discourse regarded as anti-Soviet; 8) appeal to the facts lacking in the discourse under criticism; 9) “ideological editing” taking on the form of peremptory lecturing with consequences threatening the liberty of the person under criticism. The personal register of the Soviet Ukrainian writer Dovzhenko is characterized by a broad interpretation of reality devoid of the “Marxist-Leninist blinds” and a more objective interpretation of the world due to a bigger ratio of denotative references (“evidential arguments” like “I say” and “I heard” etc) and communicative cognitive activity relative to two axiological hierarchies: national and Christian, i.e. the dominance of human values over class morality. It is proved that Dovzhenko’s screenplay was criticized within Stalin’s official register for its deviation from the cognitive schemas and the model of the Soviet discourse, for the focus on Ukraine and its citizens rather than on class struggle.

Problems with identification of the portrait of velite of the 2nd Regiment of Chevauleger-lanciers of the Imperial Guard Emile Servant

The article is based on eye-witness accounts and archival documentsand is aimed to identify miniature protrait of velite of the 2nd Regiment of Chevauleger-lanciers of the Imperial Guard. It is preserved in Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection Institute and was identified as self-portrait of Alexandre-Jean Dubois. The painter Alexandre Jean Dubois served in the regiment of Red lanciers and was the author of a series of portraits, including the famous miniature portrait of countess de Berry. As a result of research of personal registers of all farrier-velites of lancers for 1810–1815 period in Service Historique de la Défense collection we proved that the identification of this miniature as Dubois work was false. With the help of antropological data from personal registers we discovered the name of a person from the portrait. It is farrier-velite Emile Servant. We paid special attention to velite’s uniform with all its details and special details which differed it from lancers’ uniform.

Reassessing the Personal Registers and Anti-Illusionist Imperatives of the New Formal Film of the 1960s and ‘70s

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Anglo-American experimental cinema pursued a shift of artistic strategies marked by an increased foregrounding of filmic materials, a minimization of referential content, and more stripped-down structures. In the dominant narratives concerning these movements—variously known as Structural Film, New Formal Film, or Structuralist/Materialist Film—critics and scholars have argued that these minimalist film practices were virtually absolute in their eschewal of expressive or personal content. However, this article contests the formalist reductionism of this prevailing interpretation by arguing that many key films of the period, including canonical works by Paul Sharits, Hollis Frampton, and Malcolm Le Grice, retain potent traces of autobiography, affect, and diaristic recollection.

Kraft des Leeren

Traditionell wird Einfühlung anthropozentrisch und figurenbezogen behandelt. Demgegenüber arbeitet dieser Text, anknüpfend an die ästhetische Einfühlungstheorie von Theodor Lipps und neuere Bild- und Filmtheorien, eine ästhetische Form dingbezogener Einfühlung heraus. Mit Bezug auf die dramaturgische Funktionsweise sogenannter McGuffins, wie Alfred Hitchcock sie für den Film eingeführt hat, rückt ein ganzes Genre filmischer Dinge exemplarisch ins Zentrum, die die Aufgabe übernehmen, eigenständig filmische Spannung und damit Immersion zu erzeugen. McGuffins treten meist in Form von konkreten Gegenständen wie Koffern oder Behältern auf, die physischen Ortswechseln unterzogen werden und Faszination auf sich ziehen, ohne dafür auf psychologische und personenbezogene Register Bezug nehmen zu müssen. Die Spannung und Zeit antreibende Kraft von McGuffins, welche sich stets als bedeutungsleere Motive am Ende einer Geschichte erweisen, ist eine Funktion ihrer geradezu kontaktmagischen und kausalen Übertragungsmöglichkeiten. McGuffins organisieren narrative Bewegungen diesseits von Sinn und Bedeutung. Der Bezug auf dingbezogene Einfühlung weist in philosophischer Hinsicht auf die Notwendigkeit hin, nicht-semiotische und materielle Formen dramaturgischer Bewegung in ästhetischen und narrativen Theorien begrifflich stärker zu berücksichtigen. Empathy is traditionally treated anthropocentrically and figure-related. In contrast, this text, based on Theodor Lipp’s aesthetic theory of empathy and more recent image and film theories, works out an aesthetic form of thing-related empathy. With reference to the dramaturgical functioning of so-called McGuffins, as Alfred Hitchcock introduced them for film, an entire genre of cinematic things, which take on the task of independently creating cinematic suspense and thus immersion, takes centre stage. McGuffins usually appear in the form of concrete objects such as suitcases or containers which undergo physical changes of location and attract fascination without having to refer to psychological and personal registers. The suspense-and time-driving force of McGuffins, which always prove to be meaningless motifs at the end of a story, is a function of their almost contact-magic and causal transmission possibilities. McGuffins organize narrative movements instead of meaning and significance. In philosophical terms, the reference to material empathy points to the need to take greater account of non-semiotic and material forms of dramaturgical movement in aesthetic and narrative theories.

Recording the History of Secret Thoughts in Early Modern France

Chapter 2.5 begins with Pierre Huet’s early eighteenth-century description of the school of Montaigne, which he says has been flourishing for more than a century. He denounces the Essais as ‘the breviary of urbane loafers and ignorant pseudointellectuals’, of undisciplined, over-free literates who do not want to pursue proper scholarship and knowledge. The chapter goes on to offer two further case-studies of the life-writing of such free literates in early modern France (Jean Maillefer and Pierre de L’Estoile), as well as a coda on Pierre Coste and John Locke. Both read Montaigne’s work while writing manuscript journals to domestic and private ends; both combined reading and writing in books with the keeping and reviewing of personal records. L’Estoile reveals the significance of Montaigne’s references to the Essais as a registre––both institutional and personal registers were ubiquitous in this period.