THE HUMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA. DIALOGUES ON LINGUISTICS AND BEYOND WITH ACADEMICIAN V. M. ALPATOV (II)

Aim. To analyze the traditions and the current state of linguistics through the prism of comparative historical and sociolinguistic evolution of scientific ideas using the example of V. M. Alpatov’s linguistic personality.

Methodology. The main method is linguopersonological, which makes it possible to study the stages of an academic’s formation, his professional interests and discoveries, and describe the communicative features of a linguistic personality. The historical and linguistic method analyzes the events and persons related to the formation of linguistic traditions. A sociolinguistic method is also used to investigate extralinguistic factors that influenced the formation of scientific concepts. Biographical, psycholinguistic, and historical-cultural methods substantiate the axiological characteristics of a personality, reveal the linguistic picture of the scientist’s world, supplement it with rare facts, identify constants, and show individual author’s speech-behavioral tactics.

Results. A model of sociolinguistic, communicative experiment was developed and applied, the content of which was the identification of unique personal properties of V. M. Alpatov as a linguistic personality. His work in academic institutions – the Institute of Oriental Studies and the Institute of Linguistics – is reviewed. The names and events that influenced the formation of the academic’s worldview are characterized. His books on the history of linguistics, devoted to Marrism and the “Slavist’s Case”, as well as publications about V. N. Voloshinov and M. M. Bakhtin are discussed. The sociolinguistic situation in the country is analyzed: the state of small languages, the problem of expansion, the state of the Russian language. The facts of the evolution of the axiological, anthropological and linguistic worldviews of the second half of the XX – beginning of the XXI century are traced in a comparative historical perspective. The main patterns of the formation and development of V. M. Alpatov’s academic biography, included in the general context of historical, cultural and socio-political changes in the country, are identified and characterized.

Research implications. A heuristic experiment has been conducted to demonstrate and refine the methods and techniques of modern linguistics. An experiment on the cognitive analysis of scientific creativity was carried out. The problems of linguistics of the XX century are actualized and critically rethought in the context of promising ideas of linguistics of the XXI century. The practical significance lies in the demonstration and use of V. M. Alpatov’s academic and theoretical experience in the professional activities of historians, orientalists and linguists – in source studies, linguoculturology, orientalism, linguistic typology, historiography of linguistics, sociolinguistics, translation studies and linguistic prognostics. Academic dialogue as a genre makes it possible to describe and systematize the communicative features of a linguistic personality, to use this experience in the practice of preparing discussion materials on topical issues of humanitarian knowledge. Conversations about linguistics can be used as additional material to journalistic practice, lectures and seminars in university courses “General Linguistics”, “History of Linguistic studies”, “Introduction to Linguistics”, “Theory of Communication”, “Sociolinguistics”.

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