Russian Second-Language Textbooks and Identity in the Universe of Discourse (original) (raw)

In the examination o f language, one must suspend, not only the point o f view o f the 'signified* (w e are used to this by now), but also that o f the *signifier1, and so reveal the fact that, here and there, in relation to possible domains o f objects and subjects, in relation to other possible formulations and re-uses, there is language. (Foucault 1972a. Ill) This study is the outcome of my fascination with Russian second-language textbooks as artefacts of culture, a fascination prom pted by the beginning o f my teaching career in 1996. Its first version, quite modest in scope, was written in 1997. Being an exploration o f the research potential on the m acro level o f the language-culture interface, it was later incorporated in my SSHRCC-sponsored project, entitled Shared Mental Representations and Language Patterns: Research Strategies and Empirical Studies, I would like to express my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its generous support of my research. All work on this study was done under the aegis o f the Language Research Centre at the Faculty of Hum anities at the University o f Calgary. I am indebted to my colleagues at the University o f Calgary for their goodwill and constant interest in my research in the area of Russian second-language textbooks. So, what is this book about? It is an overview o f the m odifications and interaction of tw o discursive formations (the Second Language Learning and the Identity discursive formations) over four centuries of Russian history. T he theory I lean on com es from various sources, the most important o f which are Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, Roman Jakobson's framework o f the communicative act, semiotics and semantic analysis. The blend is m y own. It allows me to com pose a three-dimensional explanatory model in which smallscale linguistic detail is combined harmoniously with larger-scale language units