‘Diastratic diglossia’ in 18th-century Russia: or: When did Church Slavonic become a foreign language?

Boris Uspenskij assumes that the “Third South Slavic Influence”, which began in the 1640s, resulted in the speedy decline of diglossia in Russia and its replacement with bilingualism. This brought about a change of status of Church Slavonic: While in diglossia H and L serve as varieties of one language, in bilingualism Church Slavonic is a foreign language for Russian speakers. This paper, however, provides proof of the fact that Church Slavonic remained a variety of the Russian language with high prestige until the 1760s or 1780s. Among other things, this follows from Lo­mo­no­sov’s inclusion of Church Slavonic into his Theory of the Three Styles. Consequently, the second half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century have to be regarded as a transitional period, during which the essential features of diglossia were preserved, but the distribution of H and L gradually turned from a strictly diaphasic model into a predominantly diastratic one. We call this kind of situation ‘diastratic diglossia’.

Translated from “‘Diastratische Diglossie’ im Russland des 18. Jahrhunderts, oder: Wann wurde Kirchenslavisch zur Fremdsprache?” in Dieser, Elena (ed.), Linguistische Beiträge zur Slavistik: XX. JungslavistInnen-Treffen in Würzburg, 22.-24. September 2011, 29–45. München: BiblionMedia 2015. DOI: 10.18716/bun/digl.