Orekhov, B. V. What is philology? [Text] / B. V. Orekhov // Bulletin of the Bashkir State Pedagogical University. M. Akmulla. - 2010. - No. 3. - S. 74-82.

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The article critically analyzes the classical dictionary definitions of the word "philology", as well as its modern everyday and bureaucratic understanding. The conclusion is made about the irreducibility of these concepts to each other, the question is raised about the composition of philology and the internal unity of its constituent disciplines.

Keywords: philology, term, methodology of science, linguistics, literary criticism

The word "philology" must be treated with caution. Not because it's a "vague" concept. Its contours are no less clear than those of scientific disciplines studying, for example, the natural world - biology or chemistry. The difficulty lies elsewhere: specialists in different fields, representatives of different scientific schools, and, finally, people who are not related to science, when they say the word “philology”, do not mean the same thing. Each time, a very specific idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe subject is implied, but it is important not to make a mistake which one, because they are not very similar to each other.

An error in determining the scope of the concept of “philology” would be to proceed from the translation of the word φιλολογία ‘love for the word’. Translation cannot replace the definition, and sometimes even leads away from it. Let's say "etymology" denotes a scientific discipline that tries to establish the origin of a word, while the ancient Greek ἐτυμολογία is translated as "the science of the true." Economics is not the same as οἰκονομία 'law of the house'. In addition, it should be noted that it is not entirely clear what “love for the word” is. But even if you do not delve into the essence of “love”, it is enough to say that the poet in general “loves the word”, but most poets can hardly be called philologists, and even vice versa, in a sense, the roles of the philologist and the writer are opposite (suffice it to recall the well-known anecdote about readers and writers).

The everyday understanding of philology, inherent in people who are far from the problems of literature, draws a specialist philologist as an expert on the rules of spelling, orthoepy and punctuation, a person who is able to write a stylistically correct text, knowing the meaning of all obsolete and obsolete words. In addition, in everyday life, a philologist is charged with the duty to be familiar with the content of a certain number of key literary texts and be able to evaluate them.

However, this whole complex of stereotypes is in direct conflict with the curricula of philological faculties. A careful look will show that, compared with theoretical problems, much less classroom hours are devoted to obtaining practical skills in literate writing. Courses of literary editing, which bring up the ability for expressive writing, are perceived in the general structure of the disciplines of the philological block as side ones. It is hard to imagine that a philology student in any subject would have to learn, for example, all the dictionary entries from the letter “t” to the letter “f” as homework. Finally, in literature classes, the ideological epicenter is not at all the content of a work of art, acquaintance with it is just one of the stages of preparation for such a lesson. Evaluation is generally not characteristic of science, and a philologist will not receive either theory or skills in order to build a rating of literary texts, just as even the most diligent physics student is unlikely to compare a magnetic field and an electric charge, giving preference to one in front of the other.

It is obvious that at the philological faculties students are not trained at all to correspond to the everyday idea of ​​philologists. Moreover, course curricula require students to be given a lot of completely “superfluous” information, which, most likely, will not help them in any way in choosing a punctuation mark or a syllable that needs to be stressed, for example, in the word “anticipate” or “contract”. A philologist is not at all obliged to know what “nanka” or “ubrus” means, but, most likely, he has an idea about the relationship between sound and phoneme, the functions of language, composition, and plot. And this is a completely different kind of knowledge.

This means that the concept of philology, which underlies philological education, is completely different from the one that has become widespread in modern society at the everyday level.

Another understanding of philology, which is becoming less and less common, but which reveals itself in old dictionaries and encyclopedias, is formulated as follows: “a system of knowledge necessary for scientific work on written monuments, mainly in ancient, often dead languages.<…>philological work is carried out wherever there is a need for an accurate understanding of monuments in inaccessible languages; thus, in the ancient world in the Hellenistic period, the commentary work of philologists unfolds around the texts of Homer and tragedians.

In this case, philology is interpreted as an applied discipline, the purpose of which is to publish and comment on ancient texts. In the 19th century, “philology” was always classical philology, that is, studying the written heritage of ancient civilization. However, the vast majority of scientific works of modern philologists are not connected either with the preparation of the text for publication, or with commenting. Although the creation of a commentary is still one of the most important and noble activities for a philologist, the curriculum of the Faculty of Philology hardly prepares a student for just such an activity. In fact, philology is more of a theoretical than an applied science.

It was this old understanding that had a significant impact on the definition of philology compiled by S. S. Averintsev, which is enshrined in authoritative dictionaries: “the community of humanitarian disciplines - linguistic, literary, historical, etc., studying history and clarifying the essence of the spiritual culture of mankind through linguistic and stylistic analysis written texts. The text in the totality of its internal aspects and external relations is the original reality F<илологии>Focusing on the text, creating a service “commentary” to it (the most ancient form and classic prototype of a philological work), F<илология>from this point of view, he absorbs into his horizons the entire breadth and depth of human existence, above all, spiritual existence.<…>Strictness and special “accuracy” F<илологии>consist in a constant moral and intellectual effort, overcoming arbitrariness and releasing the possibilities of human understanding. As a Service Understanding F<илология>helps to fulfill one of the main human tasks - to understand another person (and other culture, another era), without turning him into either a “calculable” thing or a reflection of one’s own emotions ”(Great Soviet Encyclopedia, repeated in the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary, Brief literary encyclopedia, etc.).

From this definition, in real practice, only the consideration of the commonwealth of sciences remains relevant, and history, strictly speaking, does not participate in this commonwealth, but turns out to be closer to it no more than any other humanitarian discipline (anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, politics, etc.). .). Not only written texts are involved in modern scientific circulation, but also sound ones (see the section on phonetics in linguistics), and in some cases linguists are able to reach a level of abstraction where they almost do not come into contact with texts at all (reconstruction of proto-languages ​​of macrofamilies, psycholinguistics) . In addition, despite the vagueness of the concept of “spiritual being” or “spiritual culture”, many areas of linguistics do not directly help in its cognition, and linguists themselves are not always ready to recognize the connection between language and thinking, which is necessary to recognize the connection between the system of language and spiritual culture. culture. Finally, the definition of philology, which is very important for philologists themselves, as a “service of understanding” also has an ambiguous status. The theory and methodology of understanding is developed, first of all, not by philology, but by the sub-discipline of philosophy - hermeneutics. In the 19th century, it was extremely close to classical philology (see above), but since then the subject area of ​​both sciences has taken shape more clearly, shifting away from each other. Talking about philology as a "service of understanding" is an attempt (not entirely successful) to justify the existence of this science in the era of the supremacy of the criterion of practical utility.

Thus, we can say that the understanding of philology that is closest to the real state of affairs is enshrined in the nomenclature of specialties of scientists, which combines all linguistic and literary scientific disciplines into the concept of "philological sciences". This connection, to some extent mechanical, and not quite logically supported (see below), nevertheless, underlies the program of philological faculties.

Linguistics (linguistics) studies the structure of the language, its existence and history. It is she who describes how the change in cases occurs, which words are related to each other as synonyms, how words are interconnected in a sentence; how languages ​​influence each other, what patterns manifest themselves in the text, how the language variants used in different localities differ; how the appearance and meaning of words change over time, how instead of some forms of expression of the past tense, others appear in the language. Linguistics is made a science by the consideration that language at all its levels and in all its manifestations is a system, that is, something that exists according to its own laws that can be discovered, described and used. In this sense, linguistics is much closer to the natural sciences, which do the same with nature.

Literary criticism studies everything that is somehow connected with fiction: the structure, history, background and perception of a particular work or group of works, patterns inherent in the work of a writer, or all literature in general. Literary criticism is based on the idea that each text separately and all literature in the aggregate is a system, nothing is accidental in it, and everything, from words in a line to the features of national literature as a whole, is subject to patterns that can be opened and described.

In its current state, linguistics and literary criticism have already diverged quite far from each other and have few points of contact: only the linguistic analysis of a literary text, an area that neither linguists nor literary critics consider central to their sciences, and stylistics, gravitating towards to linguistics, but using literary terms, such as "metaphor", "anaphora", etc. In the other (and main) branches of linguistics and literary criticism, they rarely intersect.

Not all linguists welcome philology as a commonwealth. Representatives of serious scientific schools (in particular, those associated with the traditions of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov) do not recognize the unity of linguistics and literary criticism within "philology", pointing to serious differences both in the methods and in the subjects of these disciplines : linguistics is much closer to literary criticism than to the exact sciences (unlike literary criticism, it is able not only to describe facts, but also to build theories that explain these facts and make correct predictions about unknown facts), is focused not so much on the text as on the language system in in general (see above), while for literary criticism the text always remains the starting point.

According to this view, individual erudite scientists can be called philologists, whose encyclopedic knowledge allows them to make discoveries in various fields. A philologist is a researcher who can devote his work, on the one hand, to Pushkin's poetics, and, on the other hand, to the grammatical categories of one of the languages ​​of ancient Asia Minor; on the one hand, the artistic world of I. S. Turgenev, on the other hand, the linguistic analysis of the hydronyms of the Dnieper region. However, these areas still remain, in essence, deeply different, and their convergence in the sphere of interests of one person is not yet the basis for unification into one science. So, Kant, simultaneously with the creation of his own philosophical system, studied the structure of cosmic objects, but due to this, astronomy does not turn out to be a part of philosophy, and the fact that Lomonosov studied mining in parallel with biological research does not give the right to combine biology and geology into one science. In the understanding of this group of scientists, broad-profile philological education does not provide the proper level of proper linguistic training, so a diploma in philology cannot automatically confirm the linguistic qualification that can be obtained in the course of specifically linguistic training (for example, at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities).

Literary critics are also often inclined to treat linguistics with irony, reproaching it for its earthliness, excessive straightforwardness, misunderstanding of the fuzziness and multidimensionality of semantics. A more serious reproach addressed to linguists from the literary camp is that linguists often, focusing on details, lose sight of the phenomenon under study in its entirety and integrity, lose context, limit themselves to a narrow set of facts that do not allow reaching a high level of generalizations of general cultural order. If you look for an analogy, then for a big-minded literary critic, a linguist “is like a savage who discovered a book, but does not understand that this book is a set of symbols, and simply studies it as if it were an object that does not say anything: he tastes the pages, pulls out, sets fire to and looks to see if they burn well, describes the “patterns” for which he takes the letters and notes that the same “patterns” are repeated in some places. However, literary erudition for a linguist and linguistic literary critic, of course, will help rather than hurt. But this applies, perhaps, to erudition in any field of knowledge.

So, the use of the word "philology" requires accuracy. Each time it is necessary to clearly understand which of the listed understandings the speaker puts into the word "philology", and take into account that dictionary definitions do not correspond to the real state of affairs.

Philology can be interpreted (1) in the everyday plane, (2) in the academic plane in the spirit of the 19th century, (3) in the legal plane, and it is the latter that sets the boundaries for modern philology as a science and as an educational direction. Based on this, one has to consider philology Commonwealth of Linguistics and Literary Studies between which, however, there is no very close interaction. The combination of two such heterogeneous disciplines, however, does not interfere with giving a general description of the activities of philology as a science as a whole. Philology carries out a continuous search for knowledge in the field of verbal (that is, expressed in a word) texts and the language system on the basis of which they arise. Similarly, biology is the search for knowledge in areas related to living tissues, and mathematics is in the field of numerical patterns.

Philology as an educational activity is the development of accumulated knowledge, in which the main thing is not so much memorizing specific facts (meanings of words, punctuation rules, plots of works of art), but rather learning general principles and gaining skills in using the tools of philological science. For example, a valuable skill acquired in the course of philological education is the development of a range of reference literature (special dictionaries, sets of rules, comments), with the help of which, if desired, you can resolve some of the "philological" difficulties at the household level. Although the transformation of theory into practice is also a very specific skill that will not necessarily be acquired during training sessions.

First of all, philology is a science, it is she who sets the coordinates for the educational direction. Professor of Moscow State University A. A. Ilyushin at one time wrote a playful poem, telling about the difficult relationship of a scientist with his discipline, which always requires full dedication, but even in this case it is ungrateful:

A certain philologist, a man of science,

I worship my wife

I was ready for any torment,

Her to please one.

But never stop getting angry

Trustworthy, she

I dared to turn away -

And dissatisfied.

LITERATURE

Literary Encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939. T. 11. - M .: Khudozh. lit., 1939.

Pilshchikov I. Apology of the Commentary // Znamya. - 2004. - No. 1.

Third literary criticism. Materials of the philological and methodological seminar (2007-2008). — Ufa: Vagant, 2009.

Liddell H. G., Scott R. A Greek-English Lexicon. — Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.

The Ancient Greek-English Dictionary of Liddell and Scott, the most complete source on the vocabulary of the ancient Greek language, defines the word "philology" as 'love of argument or reasoning', 'learned conversation', 'love of learning and literature' - love of reasoning and argumentation, learned conversation, love of learning and literature. One of the first instances of the use of the word "philology" in ancient Greek is in Plato's dialogue "Theaetetus": τί σιγᾶτε; οὔ τί που, ὦ Θεόδωρε, ἐγὼ ὑπὸ φιλολογίας ἀγροικίζομαι, προθυμούμενος ἡμᾶς ποιῆσαι διαλέγεσθαι καὶ φίλους τε καὶ - Or am I acting wild, Theodore? So I myself love the conversation, and therefore I try to make you talk and enjoy the conversation with each other (146a).

Approved by order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated February 25, 2009 No. 59.

In modern science, these terms came from ancient rhetoric - the science of eloquence.

This is a poem with a secret. Each of its lines represents one of the 8 forms of iambic tetrameter, which differ in the location in the line of stops with a missing accent.

PHILOLOGY (Greek philologia - "love of knowledge") - a system of knowledge necessary for scientific work on written monuments, mainly in ancient, often dead languages. Since the most important and first in the totality of this knowledge is the understanding of the language in which the monument is written, F. is closely connected with linguistics (see). It should be noted, however, that F. in his approach to the text attested in the monuments differs significantly from linguistics; while the linguist examines all the changes that have taken place in the language as indicators of its historical movement, the philologist proceeds from a certain norm - from the perfect state of the text, which he seeks to restore by complex processing of the surviving, more or less "distorted" this text, monuments ( text criticism, recensio and emendatio - the main part of any philological work); the philologist also proceeds from the norm - the supposed single exact understanding of the text - in his second main work - in the interpretation of the text (interpretation, hermeneutics).
This normative anti-historical understanding of the language is easily explained by the essentially applied nature of F. Indeed, philological work is carried out wherever there is a need for an accurate understanding of monuments in inaccessible languages; Thus, in the ancient world in the Hellenistic period, the commentary work of philologists unfolds around the texts of Homer and tragedians; in ancient India, philological work arises from the need for an accurate understanding of the Vedas; among medieval Arabs and Jews, it develops in connection with the interpretation of the Koran and the Bible. However, in all these cases, we have the right to rather talk about the origins of F. as a science.
In European science, philosophy developed into a system of knowledge during the Renaissance, when the study of the ancient world, and somewhat later the interpretation of the Bible, turned into a political weapon, into an instrument in the fight against the feudal worldview. XVI-XVIII centuries - the heyday of classical philosophy in European science (the largest figures are Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558) and his son Joseph Justus Scaliger (Joseph Justus Scaliger, 1540-1609), Robert and Henri Etienne-Stefannos (Robert Estienne, 1503-1559, Henri Estienne, 1528-1598), Casaubon (Isaak Casaubon, 1559-1614), Melanchthon (Philipp Melanchton, 1497-1560), Yust Lipsy and many other humanists); it coincides with the beginning of the development of Eastern F. (at first, mainly Semitology - the largest figures Reuchlin (Iohann Reuchlin, 1455-1522), later the Buxtorfs (Iohannes Buxtorf, 1564-1629, Iohanne Buxtorf, 1599-1664), Ludolf (Hiob Ludolf, 1624- 1704) and many others). At the same time, the growth of national self-consciousness associated with the formation of European nations during the period of primitive accumulation causes - first of all in the most economically advanced countries of Europe: Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, England, much later in Germany, in the Slavic countries - on the one hand , philological processing of national languages ​​\u200b\u200b(the beginning of neophilology - the activities of P. Bembo (Pietro Bembo, 1470-1547), Fr. Fortunio (Gianfrancesco Fortunio, XVI century), Lod. Dolce (Lodovico Dolce, 1508-1568) - in Italy; Dubois (Jacques Dubois, 1478-1555) or Silvius, L. Meigret (Louis Meigret, 1510-1560), Pierre de la Ramee, or Ramus (Pierre de la Ramee, 1515-1572), Robert and Henri Etienne - in France ; Ant. de Nebriha (Elio Antonio de Nebricha, 1444-1533) - in Spain; Dryden (J. Dryden, 1631-1700) and Johnson (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784) - in England; Schottelius (J. G. Schottelius, 1612- 1676), Leibniz (G. W. Leibniz, 1646-1716), Gottsched (J. C. Gottsched, 1700-1766) - in German ii; Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, and Sumarokov in Russia), on the other hand, the growth of interest in national antiquities and, in connection with this, the development of national philosophies, in particular German phantasy (the most important figures, F. Junius (Franciscus Junius, 1589-1677) - in The Netherlands and England, Lambert Hermans ten Kate (1674-1731) - in the Netherlands, J. Hicks (George Hickes, 1642-1715) - in England, etc.) and Slavic F. (activities of Vuk Karadzic, 1787 -1864, Dobrovsky, 1753-1829, Vostokova, 1781-1864; the heyday of the latter Ph., however, is already under the sign of comparative historical linguistics (the beginning of the 19th century - - Grimm activities).
Expanding like this. arr. almost to infinity, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bits study, F. XVI-XVIII centuries. due to the non-differentiation in this period, most of the social sciences appear as a complex of all historical disciplines, including elements of history, ethnography, archeology, linguistics, and literary history - as an “aggregate of knowledge” (in Hegel’s words) deprived of the unity of the system and method.
The development of the listed historical disciplines into independent sciences, in particular the emergence at the beginning of the 19th century. comparative historical linguistics (see), naturally should have led to a narrowing and a clear limitation of the field of philological research; However, during the XVIII and XIX centuries. there is a dispute about the scope and methods of F. itself (in the XVIII century - between the school of Hermann (Gottfried Hermann, 1772-1848), who reduced F. to text criticism, and the “real direction”, which claimed encyclopedism and was represented by the works of Wolf, and later - Bockh (August Bockh, 1785-1867)); but nevertheless F. gradually gives way to proper linguistic research - first in the field of new European languages, and later in the field of Oriental and classical languages ​​- see Linguistics.
In the middle and end of the XIX century. the term F. is applied to those areas of knowledge where an integrated method of work is needed due to the specific nature of the monuments themselves (the study of ancient and medieval realities, myths, literatures and languages). This term is also used in Soviet science; dismissing as unscientific all the claims of F. to become a fundamental discipline for the historical sciences, revealing the purely subjective and idealistic nature of the supposedly “specific” method of F. - hermeneutics, Soviet science continues to critically use the genuine achievements of philological technology - textual criticism, analyzing and interpreting the huge material collected F. facts on the basis of special disciplines working by the dialectical-materialistic method.
On the contrary, in the West in the XX century. and especially strongly in the post-war period, the collapse of the bourgeois scientific worldview is marked by a number of attempts to revive the encyclopedism of F., to establish F. as a discipline fundamental to the historical sciences, to defend and expand the scope of idealistic hermeneutics (cf. the revival of Schleiermacher's ideas by Dilthey (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1833-1911 ) and his school, Simmel's constructions (Georg Simmel, 1858-1918), etc.). Bibliography:
History of classical F.: Sandys J. E., A History of classical scholarship..., 3 vls, Cambridge, 1903-1908; Gudeman A., Grundriss der Geschichte der klassischen Philologie, 2 Aufl., Lpz., 1909; Kroll W., Geschichte der klassischen Philologie (Sammlung Goschen, no. 367), 2 Aufl., B., 1919; Wilamowitz-Moellendorf U., v., Geschichte der Philologie (Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, hrsg. v. A. Gercke u. E. Norden. Bd. I, H. I), Lpz., 1921; Wolf F.A., Vorlesungen uber Enzyklopadie der Altertumswissenschaft. Kleine Schriften in lateinischer u. Deutscher Sprache, Bd. II, Halle, 1869; Boeckh A., Encyklopadie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften, 2 Aufl., Lpz., 1886 Usener H., Philologie und Geschichtswissenschaft, Bonn, 1882 (also in his Vortrage u. Aufsatze, Lpz., 1907); Gercke A., Methodik... (Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, hrsg. v. A. Gercke u. E. Norden, Bd. I), Lpz., 1912; History of F. Germanic: Raumer R., v., Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, vorzugsweise in Deutschland, Munchen, 1870; Paul H., Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, in Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, hrsg. v. H. Paul, Bd. 1, 2 Aufl., Strassburg, 1901 (detailed lit. given); History of F. Romanesque - Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, hrsg. v. G. Grober, 2 Bde, Strassburg, 1888-1902; Earlier works: Korting G., Encyklopadie u. Methodologie der romanischen Philologie, vol. 1-3, Heilbronn, 1884-1886, and his Handbuch der romanischen Philologie, Lpz., 1896 (obsolete). History of Ph. Slavic - Yagich I.V., History of Slavic Philology, in the book. Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology, vol. I, St. Petersburg (1908); Bulich S. K., Essay on the history of linguistics in Russia, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1904; extensive bibliography. reference book "Review of Works on Slavic Studies", edited by V. N. Beneshevich for 1908-1913, St. Petersburg - P., 1909-1918 (14 issues and 3 indexes of authors' names).
also Linguistics.

Philology is a human science that appeared during the formation of the Renaissance and studies the history of languages ​​and literature. The word "philology" came into Russian from the Greek word "philia", which means "love" in translation, and "logos" - language.

In addition to the historical development of languages, philology also studies their structure, interconnection, and influence on the culture of peoples. Philology also includes a number of independent sciences, for example, literary criticism, ethnography, folklore, and linguistics. Let's take a closer look at the profession of a philologist.

A philologist is a specialist who studies different languages, their structure and history. The philologist is also engaged in the analysis of texts and literary monuments. Philologists have a very wide field of activity.

Every philologist must be fluent in several languages. It can be noted that philologists are not only creative people, but also good journalists, successful translators, writers, critics, editors, screenwriters. Nowadays, the profession of a philologist is very diverse.

• Carry out activities in the field of research

The work of a philologist involves the study of texts and works that were written at different times. The philologist identifies various changes in words and language, as many words have changed their meaning over time.

• Collect the necessary information in the form of folklore

Often philologists have to travel a lot in order to collect information in those places where the original form of the language is still preserved.

• Preparation of material for presentation

The philologist always conducts a thorough analysis of the information received.

• Pedagogical activity

Most often you can meet philologists who teach languages ​​and literature. The skills of correctly presenting information to other people, and the ability to interest listeners are considered indispensable.

• Editing

One of the advantages of any editor is a philological education, as this ensures a high level of literacy of a specialist.

• Compilation of dictionaries
• Translation of texts

Definitely, the profession of a philologist is not suitable for everyone, because such a specialist must have many qualities, for example, perseverance and a love of reading, since the work of this specialist consists in long proofreading, then correcting, translating and editing various texts in any language. Also, a philologist must have good attentiveness so as not to miss anything.

In addition, a philologist must be proficient in oratory, since most philologists work as teachers, where they simply need this quality.

Opportunities for this profession:

• Being a philologist means having a large number of opportunities that will allow you to find yourself in a different field of activity.
• Demand. Philologists have excellent knowledge of languages, so they can get a job in almost any position.
• Knowledge of languages ​​allows philologists to get a job abroad.

The profession of a philologist is not an easy job, requiring a maximum of perseverance, rich imagination, communication skills and literacy from a person.

Poll on the topic "What is philology?" of high school students, students, people with higher education and members of philological departments shows a wide range of opinions and the almost complete absence of any coherent definition of the science of the word among some of the respondents.

“I know what it is until I am asked what it is” - these words of the Christian thinker of the Middle Ages Augustine the Blessed, spoken by him about the category of time, are quite applicable in thinking about philology.

On the one hand, this science is among the most developed. It has a certain subject, precise methods of studying it, a system of theoretical conclusions and accumulated knowledge, a wide scope of application to social practice [Volkov 2007: 23]. On the other hand, philology remains a science of unresolved problems, which are pointed out by everyone who comes into contact with it.

Let us turn to the history of philology and compare the understanding of the corresponding term among domestic representatives of philological knowledge, starting from the 18th century.

V. K. Trediakovsky, who rightfully proudly called himself a philologist, identified his science with eloquence "eloquence".

His young contemporary M. V. Lomonosov was the first in Russian science to formulate a definition of the term philologist. In the illustrative dialogue from the "Concise Guide to Eloquence" there is a remark: "Philipn. Truly, I will begin and try to make me a philologist from Philipno. [Lomonosov 1952: 342].

In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, the words philology no, but there are three single-root words - philologist, philological, philological. If a philologist in it is interpreted as "lover" [SAR: 6: 488], then the potential word philology would mean "loving".

One of the first definitions of the term philology was given by N. M. Yanovsky in his “New Interpreter…” (1806): « PHILOLOGY, Gr. Loving and teaching languages ​​and literature; a science that contains rules and notes that serve for the general knowledge of languages, their criticism, the meaning of both their own and transferred words and sayings, and finally everything that is related to the expression in different dialects of peoples, both ancient and modern. "..." Philology includes various branches of human knowledge, except for the high sciences of mathematics and physics" [Yanovsky 1806: III: 987–988].

V. I. Dal in the famous dictionary also did not bypass the science of the word. “Philology, linguistics, science or the study of ancient, dead languages; the study of living languages” [Dal 1980: 4: 534]. If V. I. Dal, limiting the understanding of philology to the limit, reduces it to linguistics, then most subsequent authors expand the understanding of philology, including the cultural aspect in it.

In the authoritative Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary by I. N. Berezin, the term philology two articles are devoted: "Comparative Philology" and "Philology". The first is interpreted by him in the spirit of comparative studies - the leading direction in science of those years, the second - philandering- is a brief outline of the content of this concept from antiquity, where oratory reached the heights of verbal skill, until the second half of the 19th century, when it was divided into two branches: "the science of the language and literature of the people" and the science of the people. In the first case, the problems of grammar, criticism, and hermeneutics remain in the focus of attention, while in the second, ethnology and cultural studies (see: [Berezin 1878: 215]). For that time, such an understanding of philology was a noticeable step forward.

In the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" of Brockhaus and Efron, philology is conceived as part of a single historical and philological science and is defined as "a science that has as its content the study of the creations of the human spirit, i.e., in their development" (see reprint: [Zelinsky 1993: 811 ]).

The "Encyclopedic Dictionary" of the Russian Bibliographic Institute Granat defines philology as follows: "love for the word, for the study of the word-thought" [Ritter 1926: 511]; “the side of historical and philological science turned to monuments” [Ibid.: 512].

S. S. Averintsev in his “Brief Literary Encyclopedia” defined philology as “a community of humanitarian disciplines that study history and clarify the essence of the spiritual culture of mankind through the linguistic and stylistic analysis of written texts.” True, in this article below there is a remarkable phrase: “It is more correct to see in F. a broad, but internally unified and self-legitimate form of knowledge, which is determined not so much by the boundaries of its subject as by a specific approach to it” [Averintsev 1972: 974].

For E. D. Polivanov, philology is a set of disciplines of the social sciences that study cultural phenomena reflected in the monuments of the word, i.e. in language and literary sources, and also (since other arts, in turn, are closely adjacent to literature) and in monuments of other arts [Polivanov 2010: 129–130].

R. A. Budagov called philology a set of sciences that study the culture of different peoples, primarily in the form in which it is expressed in language, writing, and fiction [Budagov 1976: 14].

The results of the 1979 discussion "Philology: Problems, Methods, Tasks" on the pages of the journal "Literary Review" are indicative. The speeches of well-known literary critics, linguists and philosophers J. Bilinkis, M. Gasparov, M. Girshman, V. Grigoriev, V. Kozhinov, D. Likhachev, Y. Lotman, A. Markov, V. Fedorov on various aspects of philology did not lead to the emergence a single concept of the basic foundations of this area of ​​the humanities.

Almost twenty years later, S. I. Gindin stated that there is no single definition of philology even in the works of G. O. Vinokur specially devoted to this topic. The definition can be reconstructed thanks to the statements of G. O. Vinokur about the essence of philological work. For example, “a philologist is not a “literalist” or a “grave digger”, but simply the best of readers: the best commentator and critic. The main duty of a philologist is precisely to understand absolutely everything (cited in [Gindin 1998: 5]). Note that G. O. Vinokur did not define philology directly, but through the structure of the text and reasoning like: “... there is no doubt that reading is an art that needs to be learned ... the master of reading is the person we call a philologist. The very art of reading, in the sense assumed here, will rightly be designated in this case by the word "philology"" [Vinokur 1981: 38–39]. If for G. O. Vinokur philology is the art of reading, then for S. S. Averintsev philology is the study of the human world, organized around the text and seen through the text [Averintsev 1972: 975].

Yu. V. Rozhdestvensky considered philology "a mediastinum between the doctrine of language and the doctrine of literature." In philology, he singled out general philology, which studies the correlation of different ways and forms of language use in public language practice, accounting and description of areas of communication, and the historical experience of standardizing public language practice [Rozhdestvensky 1979: 3].

It is no coincidence that over the past three years, scientific periodicals have published articles with exactly the same title “What is philology?” [Nikitin 2010; Khrolenko 2010; Annushkin 2012]. The publication by O. V. Nikitin is a republishing of a forgotten article by F. F. Zelinsky “Philology” in the Encyclopedic Dictionary by Brockhaus and Efron [Nikitin 2010]. The other two contain the author's understanding of the nature of philology. Talk about him below.

Modern encyclopedias and dictionaries answer the question of what philology is like this.

« Philology- a science (hereinafter it is emphasized by us. - A.Kh.), studying the culture, language and literature of a particular people ”[http://www.glossary.ru].

« Philology– the name of a group of disciplines (linguistics, literary criticism, textual criticism, etc.) that study human culture through text” [http://www.lan.krasu.ru].

« Philology..., a set of methods and techniques for studying written monuments from the point of view of language, style, historical and ethnic affiliation” [BE 2006: 54: 476–477].

So, in the definitions, the status of philology is defined in different ways:

(2) the name of the group of disciplines;

(3) the field of humanitarian knowledge;

(4) a set of methods and techniques for studying written monuments.

In the absence of a generally accepted definition of the term, quite unexpected definitions are possible. Thus, in the annotation to one of the monographs, it is stated that at present the text is considered as the sphere of philology - a literary discipline that studies works of writing in order to establish their special organization(highlighted by us. - A. Kh.) [Averyanov 2008].

The compilers of foreign encyclopedias faced the same scientific problem. French linguist J. Maruso term philology interprets as follows: “This word usually means the study of literature in general, but in a more specific way (with the exception of the historical disciplines proper - history, the science of antiquities) - the study of written monuments and the form of language with which they acquaint us, and in an even more special sense – the study of texts and their transmission, with the exception of the study of language, which is the study of linguistics” [Maruso 1960: 326].

The famous encyclopedia "Britannica" limited itself to a few lines: " philosophy, a term now rarely used but once applied to the study of language and literature. Nowadays a distinction is usually made between literary and linguistic scholarship, and the term philology? Where used, means the study of language i.e., linguistics ( q.v.). It survives in the titles of a few learned journals that date to the 19th century. Comparative philology was a former name for what is now called comparative linguistics ( q.v.). . It is clear from the dictionary entry that the term "philology" itself is rarely used and belongs to the field of linguistic and literary studies. Most often it means the study of language, and therefore comparative philology is gradually becoming comparative linguistics. In the 19th century word philosophy, according to the dictionary entry, was included in the titles of some educational and methodological journals. Thus, philology, in the interpretation of British lexicographers, appears as something escheat.

The fact of the absence of the concept and term itself is discouraging philology in reference books of a philological nature. So, in the "Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts" (M., 2001), the corresponding concept and term are absent, although philological method.

What is modern philology?

To get an answer to this question, let's start from the definition of philology formulated at the turn of the 1960s-1970s by S.S. Averintsev. With some variations, it was published in the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" (Ed. 3rd. Vol. 27), "Short Literary Encyclopedia" (M., 1972. Vol. 7), encyclopedia "Russian Language" (M., 1979) , "Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary" (M., 1990), etc. The definition is as follows: "PHILOLOGY (Greek philologia, letters. - love for the word, from phileo - I love and logos - the word) - the commonwealth of humanitarian disciplines - linguistics, literary criticism, textual criticism, source studies, paleography, etc., studying the spiritual culture of mankind through the linguistic and stylistic analysis of written texts. The text in the totality of its internal aspects and external relations is the original reality of philology”6.

Let us comment on this definition. It

• 1) establishes the status of philology (philology is “commonwealth of humanitarian disciplines”) and the composition of its constituent sciences (linguistics, literary criticism, textual criticism, source studies, paleography, etc.);
• 2) answers the question of what philology studies (the object of study of philology is the "spiritual culture of mankind");
• 3) names research methods (this is “linguistic and stylistic analysis”);
• 4) indicates the research material (“written texts”).

So, the main question is what does philology study: spiritual culture? Text? Or else?

The definition states that philology studies the spiritual culture of mankind. This statement is quite consistent with the philological tradition (the second chapter of the book will be devoted to its consideration). At the present stage of the development of science, spiritual culture, like other types of culture, has become the object of a separate humanitarian science - cultural studies.

So what does philology study if culture is the object of cultural studies? Yu.S. Stepanov (b. 1930), in his definition of philology, writes that philology studies the text: “PHILOLOGY (Greek philologia letters. - love for the word, from phileo - love and logos - the word) is a field of humanitarian knowledge that has its own direct object is the main embodiment of the human word and spirit - tek st)”7. Let's agree with this: all modern philological sciences - linguistics, literary criticism, folklore - deal with the text, oral or written, printed or virtual.

At the same time, let us ask ourselves the question: is philology only studying the text? The answer depends on what is meant by the object of philology. We will proceed from the fact that the objects of philology are such facts, sides, facets, etc. reality, which are singled out and processed by the philological mind and with which all philological sciences and disciplines deal (cf. Late Latin objectum - object, from Latin objicio - I throw forward, oppose). There is such a unique set of objects, which in modern science is not dealt with by any branch, except for philology. This set includes natural language, text and homo loquens (from Latin homo - a person, loquens - participle from loquor - to speak, talk, i.e. a person in his function of speaking and writing, listening and reading; Russian. equivalent: "talking person" in the broadest sense).

Indeed, homo loquens is not the object of any science other than philology. Philological sciences cannot do without the figure of homo loquens: he appears as a storyteller and a singer, an author and a reader, a TV show host and a radio journalist, he creates a text and consumes it, he is “present” in an oral, written and, of course, electronic text. .

In the texts below, which are parodies of the speeches of well-known politicians, those features of their speech are clearly visible, behind which the speaker is quite clearly visible. These texts were composed by the journalist Maria Vardenga (quoted from: Chudinov A.P., Chudinova E.A. Rhetoric and culture of speech: a collection of exercises. Yekaterinburg, 2001, p. 17).

The first phrase from "A Hero of Our Time" by M.Yu. is parodied. Lermontov: "I rode on the messenger from Tiflis." See the parody texts and the names of their "authors" below:

V.V. Zhirinovsky: I rode on bed-posts from Tiflis. Tiflis is the capital of Georgia. Georgia is a country in the Caucasus. The Caucasus is a hot spot. A dot is a mathematical concept. I have two higher educations, and I know mathematics.

I.V. Stalin: I drove home, comrades. Home, comrades, I rode horses, which changed at each station. Therefore, comrades, they are called cross-country. And I, comrades, was traveling from Tiflis.

L.I. Brezhnev: Comrades! The multimillion-strong army of Soviet Communists and all progressive mankind watched with deep emotion as the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, set off on a friendly visit from Tiflis. At the airport, he was seen off by the leaders of sunny Soviet Georgia, representatives of the working class and the peasantry.

(We invite the reader to determine for himself what features of the speech of political figures are parodied by the journalist.)

Natural language is a purely human “tool”: without it, there is no person, therefore, there is no text.

A text is a message that the speaker and writer creates by means of language for the listener and reader, even if the speaker and writer himself is the listener and reader. Such a "coincidence" takes place, for example, in notebooks, in situations of reasoning aloud...

Each of the philological sciences is addressed to the totality of objects. It is they who are included in the number of philological. Another thing is that each of them studies different aspects of these objects.

Thus, linguistics studies language as a separate object of reality in its entirety (in its current state and in history, at rest and in action), as the material from which texts are “woven”, and the texts themselves in their diversity; finally, it is linguistics that considers language as something without which a person is unthinkable, and a person in his ability to act through language and this activity itself.

Literary criticism studies that part of the totality of texts "woven" by a person through language, which represent the unity of the art of fiction and the art of the word (this part of the texts forms fiction); language is interesting for literary criticism as the art of the word; man is both the subject of artistic research and the researcher himself, i.e. writer, author, and the one for whom this artistic research is being carried out (the reader).

Let's get back to culture. Now the question arises: if culture is not the object of study of philology, then what is their relationship? The self-determination of culture as a subject of study of a special science, cultural studies, does not at all cancel the close relationship between culture and the objects of philology.

What is culture? If this is “a very complex set of ideas organized in a code of relations and values: traditions, religion, laws, politics, ethics, art - everything that a person, wherever he was born, is saturated to the very depths of his consciousness and that directs him behavior in all forms of activity”, then it, culture, together with nature and society, constitutes the environment in which a person develops and functions - language - text. “We live in the world of culture” (Yu.M. Lotman). This means that the essence of natural language, text, and especially homo loquens, is largely conditioned by culture. There is one more side to these relations: both the text, and the language, and the person as a whole are the main embodiment of the human spirit (see the above definition of philology given by Yu.S. Stepanov).

A vivid illustration of the interaction of culture and language is provided by the studies of the outstanding contemporary linguist Anna Wierzhbitskaya (b. 1938). In the book "Language. Cognition. Culture ”(Russian translation - M., 1997. P. 33--88) it shows that“ the features of the Russian national character are revealed and reflected in three unique concepts of Russian culture. This is the soul, fate, longing. They "constantly arise in everyday speech communication", "Russian literature repeatedly returns to them." The scientist identifies a number of semantic properties that are especially noticeable when analyzing the named words. One of these semantic properties is emotionality. So, in Russian, when compared with English, one sees a wealth of “active” emotional verbs “to rejoice, to yearn, to be bored, to be sad, to worry, to worry, to be upset, to mope, to lose heart, to be proud, to be horrified, to be ashamed, to admire, to admire, to rejoice , angry, angry, anxious, indignant, indignant, languishing, nervous, etc. - explicitly, openly expressed. - A.Ch.) confirmation in the language itself, which is clearly seen from the following examples:

Often given to despondency, indignation about what is happening in the world (Tolstoy).

We should not indulge in despondency at any sudden loss ... (Gogol).

Do not give in to a feeling of annoyance ... (Tolstoy)."

So, modern philology studies three objects: natural language, text and homo loquens as the main embodiment of the human spirit.

Written text as a material of philology. The considered definition of philology points to written texts as the material of philology. This indication is most of all addressed to the time when the interest of the philological sciences was focused on the study of "dead" languages ​​- Ancient Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Turkic, Old Slavonic, etc. The fact is that they can be studied only according to written texts. The same situation occurs in the study of the history of "living" (=modern) languages ​​and literary works of most writers and storytellers.

The end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI century. -- a time when the relationship between philology and text changes radically. Firstly, the philological sciences are not limited to the study of written texts only: the 20th century brought methods of audio and video recording of oral texts, a new type of texts - virtual ones - drew attention to "mixed" texts (such are the majority of advertising texts, oral speech texts created by and perceived in connection with the situation, and many others).

Secondly, philology turned to texts that are not traditionally recognized as “examples” of culture. Among the "exemplary" usually include, for example, the works of classics of literature (but not local and especially not beginning writers), speeches of prominent public figures, political figures (but not local politicians), etc. However, any text, we repeat once again Yu.S. Stepanov, is the embodiment of the human spirit. The human spirit is embodied in different forms and contains different meanings: from high to low, - it is manifested both in poetry, for example, by I. Brodsky, and in propaganda appeals written on the walls of buildings, garages; in the texts posted on the website of the President of Russia, existing in chats, blogs and Twitter...

So, the material of modern philology is made up of all types of texts, regardless of their texture (lat. factum - processing, structure), their relationship to "high" culture. Therefore, in modern philology, the term message is used as a designation for texts of any texture. Thus, the connection between the text and its belonging to the written type of texture is broken. Therefore, we can say that the words of G.O. Vinokura: “Everything written, printed, said is the subject of a philological commentary”9 sound prophetic.

Methods of research in philology. From the methods of philology S.S. Averintsev singles out analysis not by chance.

Analysis (ancient Greek analysis - decomposition, dismemberment) as a method of philology aims to get an answer to the key question: how is “living meaning” (Gadamer) comprehended, i.e. how is the process of understanding carried out, what is the result of this process? In other words, analysis in philology is not just a dismemberment, decomposition of the object under study into its component parts, but also the establishment of their role (functions) in solving the problem of comprehending the meaning. Thus, the analysis of reviews of works in the miniature genre (on the site http: / / www.proza.ru /) forces one to look for those signals that the reader (more precisely: the Internet user) sees in the reviewed text and which, accordingly, serve as the basis for his review. They can

* lie in different planes of the thumbnail text. These are the linguistic and speech features of the text, the way it is represented by a computer, the meaning in the form as it is perceived by the reader:

Forgive me, O God, for all past sins

For all the bad things you have, Jesus I ask forgiveness.

For the pain and tears of loved ones and relatives,

For lies, betrayal and misunderstanding of others.

For not helping much

For those who need and suffer.

For hate, for dislike,

I apologize again and again (Via Dolorosa).

Rec. just class!

Everything fits in these lines...

I think that this is the confession of every person in this world ... (Click-Click);

I do not wanna grow up. I'm scared. Really scary. Talking about adulthood, responsibility and decision-making unsettles me. I try to run away, hide, go to the bottom, but all my efforts are in vain. The burden of growing up follows me like a shadow. (Penguinko Penguinko. I'm looking for And I don't want to grow up).

Rec. Interesting. For the first time I meet a person who would not like to grow up as soon as possible (Chao Bombino);

Start from life situations that lie behind the text:

<...>My knight, I will sing to you, How I killed my dream.

I entered into battle with her a long time ago, But it was not easy to fight ...

So that the dream has found an end I took out a treasure chest from an oak tree.

In the night I guarded her with a sword ... I killed what I protected so much.

I plunged my longing into a dream ...

Blind-gusler now, I sing ... (In Dream. Bylina). Rec. I didn't have to fight my dream

I just overslept her, that's all, I overslept the moment when she passed by my house, and that's all ...

Sincerely, Vyacheslav (Vyacheslav Cherkasov);

* be conditioned by the text as an undivided integrity:

One day the Candlestick said to the Candle:

• - Whatever you say, the owner can't do without me!
• - Of course, - the Candle agreed, - if it wasn't for you, he would burn his hand with my melted wax.
• - What's right is right! said the Candlestick proudly. “My cause is noble and deserves respect!” And you…” he sighed with bitter disappointment. - You shed all the burning tears and shorten in size. You will burn and nothing will be left of you. And your tears won't help. Looking at your short age, you yourself want to cry. He even whimpered. What can you do in such a short amount of time? Consider it a useless existence...
• (Elena Gorysvet. Candlestick and candle).

Rec. Magnificent, very beautiful (Merhiy).

Thus, when studying a text, we actually turn to its author and reader - to those figures that are generalized by the concept of homo loquens. However, in order to answer why this or that signal is chosen, how it can be used, other research methods should be applied in addition to the analysis (see Chapter 6 of the tutorial). Here we emphasize two points: in philology, analysis is a fundamental, but not the only method of research; in modern philological sciences, analysis has become more diverse (there is linguistic, literary, philological, communicative, rhetorical, semiotic, hermeneutical and a number of others analysis).

Finally, let us consider the status of philology, its place in the system of sciences. It is important that modern philology has already freed itself from the "captivity" of other humanities and has become an independent field of knowledge that is part of the humanities. What is her status?

An interesting thought on this subject was expressed by G.O. Vinokur: “Philology is not a science, more precisely ... there is no such science, which, unlike others, could be designated by the word “philology” as its name”10. The same provision, only expressed in other words, is contained in the definition of S.S. Averintseva. He qualifies philology not as a science, but as a commonwealth of the humanities. This raises the question of the nature of relations between philological disciplines. What is philology: a commonwealth - a set of sciences / scientific disciplines - an “aggregate of information” (Hegel)? (In comparison with the sciences, scientific disciplines solve more specific problems.)

The objective unity of the philological sciences, the commonality of their methods and research material makes it possible to negatively evaluate Hegel's thesis about philology as an aggregate of information (cf.: lat. aggregatus - attached), i.e. as a mechanical formation, without internal connections between the constituent parts. The level of differentiation of sciences and scientific disciplines at the present stage of development of philology, the degree of their independence allow us to recognize modern philology as a set of sciences and scientific disciplines. (Keep in mind that the notion of a community is more neutral than a commonwealth.)

Thus, modern philology is a combination of the humanities and scientific disciplines that study natural language, text and homo loquens through analysis - “the main embodiment of the human spirit” (Yu.S. Stepanov).

Philology, including at the present stage of its development, is focused on the main problem of human existence - the problem of understanding. This idea was emphasized by S.S. Averitsev (see reading materials). At the turn of XX-XXI centuries. the problem of understanding has become even more significant, since modern man is becoming more complex, individualizing; No wonder there is an expression: "The 20th century is the century of objections."