DOI:10.30842/alp23065737201143186
Krongauz M. A., Somin A. A.
Ekspressivnyye etnonimy v russkom yazyke: sistematizatsiya i
otsenka. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. 2024. 20(1):
143–186.
The article aims to systematize and evaluate thirty Russian
ethnonyms, mostly of expressive and/or negative nature (ethnic
slurs), according to several criteria, the most universal of which
is the assessment of the degree of offensiveness (rudeness).
Another task was to establish a correlation between the age and
gender of the Russian respondents vs. their knowledge of the word
and its evaluation. Additional criteria also included stylistic
labels like ‘ironic’, ‘inappropriately intimate’, ‘bookish’, or
‘outdated’. Apart from describing and systematizing specific
ethnonyms, the study was also to verify the respective procedures
proposed and qualify the results obtained as
reliable/interpretable. For this purpose, a survey of 200
respondents was undertaken to obtain qualitative and quantitative
data on a range of ethnonyms. The main idea was to evaluate the
selected ethnonyms along the ‘rudeness’ scale by obtaining native
speakers’ opinion on the proposed lexemes. Our interpretation of
the survey results made it possible to clarify the meanings of a
number of ethnic group labels (khachi, churki
‘entrants from the Caucasus and/or Central Asia regions’,
chernyye ‘blacks’, etc.) and establish that some
fluctuations along the rudeness score depend on the specific
meaning intended in each individual case. In some cases, the study
established a correlation between the assessment along a rudeness
scale and the age of the respondent (as, for example, for the word
negry ‘negro, black ethnicity’). An age-related
correlation between respondent’s knowing a word and understanding
its actual meaning was found as, for example, for the word
chukhontsy ‘Finns’. Expressive (inappropriately intimate,
etc.) ethnonyms with a low rating of offensiveness were also found,
as for example, dagi — referring to people from Dagestan.
Also found was a significant deviation from the minimum rudeness
score for regular ethnonyms normally considered neutral as, for
example, for the word tadzhiki ‘Tajiks’ that can be
described as demonstrating a “negative shift”.
Keywords
ethnophaulism, ethnic slur, survey, ethnonym,
pejorative, quantitative methods, assessment of rudeness, stylistic
label, negative shift
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