| The present study looks at three nineteenth-century dictionaries from the Slavic world: Samuel Bogumil Linde's 1807-14 Slownik jezyka polskiego [Dictionary of the Polish Language ], Vuk Stefanovic Karadzics 1818 Srpski rjecnik [Serbian Dictionary], and Vladimir Ivanovich Dal' 's 1863-6 Tolkovyi slovar' zhivago velikorusskago iazyka [Interpretive Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language]. The dissertation attempts, through an analysis of the relationship of language and ideology in these dictionaries, to draw an outline of the Slavic space in the nineteenth century as it was imagined by these three intellectual architects. The dissertation argues that bracketing the sometimes partisan question of the linguistic tenability of each man's vision and approaching each dictionary as the manifestation of a specific scientific discourse---a methodology that requires an examination of both the dictionary's lexical corpus and its structural organization---produces a revealing snapshot of each man's theory of what a national language should look like and what it should do, and by corollary, how a nation should be organized and function.; The dissertation demonstrates that the three dictionaries in question all suggest a common ideology---romanticism---and cultural identity---Greater Slavic---without ever elaborating or fully committing to either. Rather, in approaching these cultural and ideological borders, these three lexicographers define the borders of a missing ideology---Slavic romanticism. Linde and Vuk reveal the disintegration of Enlightenment ideology in favor of more local, less prescriptive models and Dal' brings up the rear, showing the dying breaths of Slavic romanticism in his idiosyncratic linguistic nationalism. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of several lexicographical works from the Slavic world that belong to the romantic period proper and argues that Vuk, Linde, and Dal' had just cause to circumvent the romantic in their dictionaries, since romantic ideology appears to be incompatible with coherent lexicography. |
