Kalmyks and Tuvans in Russian discourse: 20th to early 21st centuries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2019.4.13Keywords:
ethnonym; Kalmyks; Tuvans; Russian discourse; linguistic worldview; Russian linguistic worldview; Russian National CorpusAbstract
The article examines the functioning of the ethnonyms ‘Kalmyks’ (Rus. калмыки) and ‘Tuvans’ (Rus. тувинцы) in Russian-language discourse, seeking to delineate certain characteristics of ethnic fragments within the linguistic worldview that would mirror the interactions between representatives of different nations and cultures.
The work deals with the Russian National Corpus. Qualitative data attest to that there prevail contexts related to the ethnonym ‘Kalmyk’, namely, 1917 word tokens across 481 documents, the earliest one dated to 1688-1709 and the latest one – to 2013. The ethnonym ‘Tuvan’ has been traced in documents dated to the 20th century and further: between 1930 and 2015, there have been identified 25 respective documents containing 38 word tokens. The difference results from differing periods of interaction between the Russians and Kalmyks / Tuvans, since the earliest active Russian-Kalmyk contacts date back to the 17th century, while the Russian-Tuvan relations began to develop two centuries later.
The analysis of co-occurrence of the ethnonyms with attributive elements and other ethnonyms in enumeration sequences makes it possible to reveal national and cultural elements of respective ethnonymic clusters, obtain ethnographic information about Tuvans and Kalmyks available from Russian-language discourse.
The ethnonym ‘Kalmyk’ illustrates the gradual evaluativity change of the word in terms of religion – from pejorative accounts to neutral ones. It is noteworthy that the mid-20th-century Russian discourse contains no mentions of confessional peculiarities inherent to Tuvans and Kalmyks, while the early-21st-century narratives characterize Kalmyks and Tuvans as adherents of Buddhism.
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Published
How to Cite
Yarmarkina G. M. Kalmyks and Tuvans in Russian discourse: 20th to early 21st centuries. The New Research of Tuva. 2019, № 4 [online] Available at: https://nit.tuva.asia/nit/article/view/891 (access date ...). DOI: 10.25178/nit.2019.4.13
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Author Biography
Galina M. Yarmarkina, Kalmyk Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Sciences
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Leading Research Associate, Department of Mongolian Philology, Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Postal address: 8 I.K. Ilishkin St., 358000 Elista, Russian Federation.
Tel.: +7 (847-22) 3-55-06.
E-mail: yarmarkinagm@kigiran.com
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