Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya called one of her last articles: "My rook has arrived" (Nevskoe Vremya newspaper, January 10, 1996). She was indignant at the incorrect coordination of nouns like doctor with definitions and predicates: to say My doctor ordered, Lydia Korneevna thought, it's like saying My rook flew... And not only this particular phenomenon was discussed in her article. I cite numerous examples of mistakes in the accent (accept, intention and under.), in the declension (I live in Odintsovo - why not in Odintsovo), examples of how women are unjustifiably called translators, not translators, correspondents, not correspondents, being upset about the fact that "the intelligentsia has lost its immunity" and "does not make a selection" of language means, L. Chukovskaya states:

"A misfortune has happened: it [the Russian language] is becoming impoverished and dead before our eyes (and in our ears)... The very foundation is collapsing: additions are dying off, and for some reason the names of localities and numerals are not inclined." And he ends his article with a bitter exclamation addressed to the Russian language: "I still have one question: are you alive-alive as life?".

Complaints about the impoverishment and corruption of our language are heard from the lips of not only such strict guardians (or guardians?) norms and cultural traditions, what (what?) There was Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya. Many people are concerned about the current state of their native speech and what is happening to it: first of all, writers who deal with the word professionally, as well as politicians, public figures, scientists, journalists, teachers, doctors... And, of course, linguists: although they are called upon to unbiasedly and comprehensively study the processes that occur in the language, they are far from indifferent to everything that threatens the unity and integrity of the literary language, which undermines its norm, destroys cultural traditions.

Modern linguistics has moved far away from that objectivist approach.

The article was written in the framework of the project "Social Differentiation of the Modern Russian language", funded by the Russian Humanities Research Foundation (grant No. 97-04-06153).

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the position that academician A. A. Shakhmatov once defended:

"It would be strange in general," he wrote, " if a scientific institution, instead of showing how to speak, decided to indicate how to speak." As you know, linguists are the authors of numerous dictionaries, grammars, and reference books that not only describe the language, but also contain rules for its use, characteristics of various language tools in terms of their suitability in certain communicative situations, and an assessment of the expressiveness (or, conversely, inexpressiveness) of these tools. Linguistics has long established something like an unwritten law: any linguistic phenomenon must be considered comprehensively and thoroughly, and only then it can be evaluated on a "good/bad" scale (for the language, for culture as a whole, etc.).

Therefore, before answering the question of how disastrous for the Russian literary language are all the innovations that have appeared in it recently, it is necessary to find out what these innovations are, what their nature is, and what role they play in the overall process of language evolution and, in particular, in the evolution of the literary norm.

The size of the journal article does not allow us to touch on all the processes taking place in the modern Russian literary language. But still, it is advisable to focus on what is most characteristic, what distinguishes the current stage of development of our language from previous ones. Two phenomena seem very definite. This is (1) jargonization of literary speech and (2) strengthening the process of borrowing foreign words.

1. Jargonization of literary speech

The Russian language of the middle and especially the second half of the XX century is characterized by the process of blurring the boundaries between the subsystems that together make up the national language system: elements of vernacular and local dialects merge into the literary language;

local dialects themselves are strongly influenced by the literary language (primarily through the mass media-radio, television, and the press); social and professional jargons lose their former isolation and "supply" words and expressions such as dohy, bullshit, showdown, run over, hang noodles on your ears, roof went, etc. into general speech usage. Many of the reasons for this are rooted in the social and demographic processes taking place in our society.

Thus, in comparison with the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century, the number of native speakers of the literary language significantly expanded due to immigrants from workers and peasants, that is, the democratization of the literary language took place (and continues): it began to serve a much wider audience.

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a circle of people, not just the intelligentsia, as was the case in the past. This, of course, affects the nature of its norm: it is loosened to a certain extent, because the layers and groups that join the literary language carry with them their own speech skills - colloquial, dialect, jargon, which often come into conflict with traditional literary ways of language expression. The processes of democratizing the composition of native speakers of the literary language and undermining the traditional norm are described quite well and fully in the well-known monograph "The Russian Language and Soviet Society", published in 1968 (I refer the reader to it, especially to Volume 1 of the four).

For our time-the end of the XX century-is characterized not so much by the actual democratization of the composition of native speakers of the literary language, but by the entry into public life of such layers and groups, whose representatives in their habits and preferences are associated with various kinds of jargons and other forms of uncodified, non-literary speech. In addition, the departure from the canons and norms of the totalitarian state in the field of social life, the proclamation of freedom in the socio-political and economic sphere, as well as in human relations, affects, in particular, the assessment of certain linguistic facts and processes: what was previously considered to belong to a socially unprespectful environment (criminal, mafia, simply uncultured) is beginning to acquire "citizenship rights" along with the traditional means of literary language. This is felt by everyone, not just linguists: "We do not notice how crime is included in everyday life, in the lexicon, how television and radio began to speak the language of prisoners and criminals, how the minuses and pluses of social behavior were reversed, how the age-old commandments and taboos developed by humanity for self-defense turned out to be abolished" (Izvestia. 1997. November 11).

In the last decades of the outgoing century, the Russian literary language has been strongly influenced by the jargon and vernacular language environment, and migration processes play an important role in this influence: mixing of different strata of the population, the outflow of rural population to cities, the complication of the social composition of urban residents, and the intensification of communication between representatives of different (including their language skills) groups, etc.

The communicative role of jargons has been underestimated in the past. Until relatively recently, in Russian studies, it was believed that jargons do not have a social basis for their existence. This point of view had some reasons. Thus, by the middle of the 20th century, the beggar's argo, which was quite well developed in pre-revolutionary times, seemed to have completely lost its social base; the argo of street children, which absorbed many elements of thieves ' jargon and

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the former was quite active in the 20s, but later fades away, not having a stable contingent of carriers. However, at the end of the century, both argos are revived in a new social and linguistic guise, as the ranks of beggars and street children multiply, who use some specific forms of language expression, mostly different from those used by their predecessors. This is only part of the multi-colored palette of modern social jargons and argos: they exist along with such language formations used by criminals, mafiosi, prostitutes, drug addicts, counterfeiters, card "scammers" and other social groups that make up a certain part of the urban population of modern Russia.

These numerous jargons and argos are mostly independent, "flowing" into each other: for example, in the field of vocabulary and phraseology, the jargons of drug addicts, prostitutes, beggars have a lot in common, student jargon has a commonality with hippie slang, "shuttles" actively use commercial argos in their speech activities, etc.

This diversity is based on prison-camp jargon. It was formed in the socially diverse environment of Soviet camps and prisons for a number of decades. Having adopted much of the lexical and phraseological arsenal of pre-revolutionary thieves 'argot, prison - camp jargon significantly expanded not only the set of expressive means, but also the social composition of those who used it: they were familiar with it, it was actively used as "thieves in law", "burglars", "bear keepers", " skokari"pluckers" and other representatives of the criminal world, as well as recent engineers, civil servants, military personnel, students, workers, actors, journalists, poets, peasants, doctors... - in short, all those who made up the multi-million population of Stalin's camps.

In modern conditions, prison-camp jargon finds a new "habitat" (it is used, for example, by businessmen, journalists, politicians) and is modified, replenished with new formations and changing the meaning of traditionally used lexical units: for example, naparit "to deceive", cabbage " money "(initially only about dollars - because of their use). green color), put on the counter "start increasing daily interest on unpaid debt on time", etc.

Slang words and phrases are not uncommon in literary speech.

At first, jargonization manifested itself mainly in its oral - colloquial variety (this was noted by researchers of Russian colloquial speech), then, closer to our days, in the language of mass media, in journalism, and in the speeches of politicians,

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deputies, journalists, and even writers. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Undoubtedly, it is bad if we consider the process of jargonization of literary speech exclusively from the standpoint of the traditional norm, without allowing the idea of the inevitable renewal of the set of expressive means in the course of language evolution. As the study of the previous stages of the development of the Russian literary language shows, the process of renewal has always been dynamic, and sometimes very difficult, in the struggle between "archaists" and "innovators". But this process has always been characterized by careful selection of innovations, "weighing" their properties in terms of suitability for the communicative needs of a cultural society. Elements of this selection can be observed even now: in the flow of slang words and phrases, the eyes of those who are endowed with linguistic flair and taste distinguish some individual expressions that can be used in literary speech (of course, with a certain stylistic coloring and mainly in casual communication).: for example, the words snitch, cool, tusovka are marked in the speech of exemplary native speakers of the literary language.

Many of the jargon elements lose their social attachment, become well-known in different social groups of native Russian speakers, and some are developed in the literary language: for example, the phraseology sit on the needle, getting from the speech of drug addicts to the pages of newspapers, "overgrown" with derivatives:

The region is stuck on a subsidy needle; You can't always sit on the needle of investment, etc.; the verb omit, which in prison and camp jargon means "to subject a man to sexual violence, thereby humiliating him", in literary speech can be applied to other situations, acquiring a figurative meaning: the Duma was not dissolved, but omitted.

Such a significant and diverse influence of social jargons on the literary language gives reason for a number of researchers to talk about the beginning of the formation of the so-called general jargon-language education, which does not just occupy an intermediate position between the actual jargons (say, prison and camp. thieves, beggars), on the one hand, and the Russian literary language, on the other, but it is also actively used by native speakers of the literary language in an informal setting (see, for example, the recently published explanatory dictionary of Russian general jargon by O. P. Ermakova, E. A. Zemskaya and R. I. Rozina: "Words we all Met" Moscow, 1999). Note that the concept of common jargon (argot, slang) has long been used by linguists in the study of other modern languages:

French, American version of English. Apparently, the formation of such intermediate means of communication in the general system of the national language is a trend peculiar to the development of many modern societies.

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The influence on literary speech of uncodified areas of language-colloquialisms, social and professional jargons-is observed not only in vocabulary and phraseology, but also, for example, in inflection and syntax.

So, recently, the use of plural forms with stressed endings in masculine nouns has become unusually active: Platoon, Term, cake, soup, and even search, Challenge. Many of these forms enter literary speech from the professional environment: Platoon (and also in indirect cases: Platoons. platoons, etc.) - from the speech of the military, the term and search from the speech of prosecutor's and police officers: "Illegally increasing the length of stay of persons under investigation in pre-trial detention centers" (From a speech on television by the Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia. 1999. 11.06); "The Prosecutor's office authorized searches in the premises of both companies" (From a speech on the radio by a representative of the Moscow police. 1999, May). Ambulance workers complain that on a different night they have several calls, builders are haunted by weak rigging cables, prospectors express out loud dissatisfaction with salary delays in the mines, and even the writer Mikhail .Zhvanetsky admitted that he was tired of standing under the light of Jupiters (TV. 1999. 24.07), and the sculptor V. Maloletkov considers Vera Mukhina one of the great sculptors of the XX century (TV. 1999. 05.07).

The prevalence of forms with stressed inflections in professional speech has been noted by linguists for a long time, but a significant increase in the frequency of these forms in public speech - on radio and television - is a characteristic feature of the last decade. This phenomenon indicates the influence on the literary language not so much social as professional jargons, professional manner of handling language tools. In this regard, it is appropriate to point out such a source of influence on literary speech as the official "language". At one time, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky coined the term "clerical", which he used to denote the inappropriate use of words and phrases of official-business, "clerical" style in everyday speech. However, in addition to the actual clerical expressions such as such, in the absence, in part and in part, of administrative documents characteristic of the language, the official and business sphere of communication develops such ways of designating certain objects and relations that are used mainly in the oral speech of officials and from there fall into public speech, not limited by the framework any particular professional environment.

Thus, the official "language" gives rise to such unusual formations for the traditional literary usage of words as to speak and discuss in the meaning of "discuss" (It is necessary to speak this question at a meeting; We will discuss this later), to puzzle

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in the meaning of putting (before someone) some task " {The main thing is to puzzle your subordinates so that they don't hang around), progress in the meaning of "shifts, changes" (There have been progress in Yugoslavia. - From the speech of V. S. Chernomyrdin), specifics in the sense of "specific content of something" (The document is important, but it is necessary to fill it with specifics, apply it to real situations in different prefectures of Moscow-TV. 1998, June; speech by an employee of the Moscow City Hall), developments (We already have some developments on this problem) and some others.

The construction with the preposition po has become widespread in modern speech: negotiations on Chechnya, an agreement on Gazprom, a vote on Putin, a letter on the prosecutor General, etc., which also came from administrative and official jargon. It was created as a result of an ellipsis: instead of saying negotiations concerning the situation in Chechnya, or a vote aimed at electing Putin (to the post of prime Minister), - they speak more concisely and thus indicate only the topic of the conversation, but not its content.

Some other professional and social jargons can also be found in modern literary speech. For example, from the speech of financial workers, the verb pay in the sense of "pay"penetrates into literary speech usage: We paid for this order on time, but the plant has not yet supplied us with equipment}, from the" language " of doctors - combined injuries, to breathe the patient (wounded), to pierce the patient with penicillin (that is, to conduct a course of penicillin treatment) and generally treat him, fasting urine (urine taken on an empty stomach), emergency measures (actions), etc.

In the modern language situation, the role of professional "computer" jargon is very noticeable. It is entirely based on the terminology of English origin. However, native speakers of this jargon do not just adapt English technical terms to the Russian language, but play around with these terms in every possible way, deliberately distorting them, bringing them closer to Russian words, filling them with double meanings, etc. It turns out quite easily and naturally, especially since the "creators" of computer jargon are mostly young people who have not gone far from the student time with its equally joking, yernichesky youth jargon, freely distorting and playing up English words (girl, prenty, shoozy, trusera, byte, etc.).

In addition to quite "serious" special terminology, which has recently become popular not only among specialists, but also on the pages of the press, in broadcasts on radio and television, in oral communication between representatives of the intelligentsia (such as display, file,

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interface, driver, website, etc.), in the field of computer information processing, a lot of joking words and phrases that are understandable only to a professional are used, which give the computer "language" the properties of professional jargon: pyzhamker (from the English page maker), chekist (from the name of the text program Check It), mrupopskal (Turbo language Pascal), momed (a corruption of the term modem), glass stump (put the Windows program in the Pentium ' computer, the English window "window" and the name of the computer brand are played), gamit "play a computer game "(from the English game "game"), keyboard keyboard, etc.

Many common words get a peculiar use in the" computer " environment, either changing their meaning or being inserted into an unusual (for a literary language) context: the computer freezes, fails, information is loaded into it, which can be downloaded to a floppy disk, printed on a printer, and if it is unnecessary - sent to the trash. A novice user is called a teapot (there are even special manuals on working with a computer that are addressed to teapots), in contrast to the true user, to whom the Anglicism user is applied (English user - from to use "to use"), and from someone who only thinks of himself as a computer expert, but in reality he is not. for which he gets the nickname lamer (from the English lame "lame, weak").

In view of the ever-increasing role of computers and the process of computerization of various aspects of human activity, computer jargon becomes socially active, as if it falls into the focus of social attention. Of course, many other branches of science and technology have their own professional "languages", and at one time some of them were also popular. For example, in the 50s and 60s, this role was played by the professional "language" of nuclear physicists, a little later - jargon serving the field of space research and development, in the 70s and early 80s. some words and phrases used by various kinds of psychics, telepaths, yogis become fashionable (and still do the words aura, energetika, biofield, trance and pod. it's not just used by parapsychologists). In the 90s, computer jargon clearly stands out from all other professional jargons, both in terms of its own communicative role and the degree of possible influence on literary speech-both as a means of intra - group communication and as a kind of symbol of time.

2. Strengthening the process of borrowing foreign words

The historical evolution of almost every natural language is characterized by the process of borrowing units from other languages in contact with the data. Mechanisms of the borrowing process multiple times

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They are described in linguistic studies; they study the reasons for borrowing and the conditions under which this process is either intensified or attenuated, the areas of human activity that are most in need of foreign-language vocabulary and terminology, the types of borrowed language units: mainly words, but the language can also be influenced by a foreign language in the construction of any syntactic constructions, in the formation of words - this is how word-forming tracing papers are born (skyscraper - a "cast" of the English skyscraper, insect-a morphemic translation of the Latin insectum, etc.) - or in the appearance of a word meaning that is not motivated by other meanings of this word - this is how semantic tracing papers appear (newspaper duck, nail of the season, hotline, etc.).

Borrowing is a phenomenon that native speakers often treat with a fair amount of suspicion: why take something from others - is it impossible to do without using the native language? Why do we need an image, if there is an image, why a summit, if we can say a summit meeting^ Why is a remake that is fashionable today in cinematography better than a regular remake] And is consensus stronger than consent]

Often, a foreign word is associated with something ideologically or spiritually alien, even hostile, as it was, for example, in the late 40s during the struggle against "low worship of the West." But there are other times in the history of society when a more tolerant attitude to external influences prevails, and, in particular, to borrowing new foreign words. Such a time can be considered the 80-90s of this century, when there were such political, economic and cultural conditions that determined the predisposition of Russian society to adopt a new and widespread use of previously existing, but special foreign language vocabulary.

Here are some of these conditions: the awareness of various segments of the Russian population of their country as part of the civilized world; the predominance in ideology and official propaganda of interactive, unifying trends over trends that reflected the opposition of Soviet society and the Soviet way of life to Western, bourgeois models; overestimation of social and moral values and a shift in emphasis from class and party priorities finally, an open orientation to the West in the field of economics, the political structure of the state, in the fields of culture, sports, trade, fashion, music, etc. All these processes and trends characteristic of Russian society in the second half of the 80s and early 90s undoubtedly served as an important incentive that facilitated the activation of foreign language vocabulary.

This is easily illustrated by the change of names in government structures. The Supreme Soviet has become stable (and not just as an independent state).

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journalistic periphrasis) should be called the Parliament, the Council of Ministers-the Cabinet of Ministers, its chairman-the Prime Minister (or simply Prime Minister), and its deputies-deputy prime ministers. Cities now have mayors. vice-mayors, prefects, sub-prefects, councils have given way to administrations, and heads of administrations have acquired their own press secretaries and press attaches, who regularly speak at press conferences, send out press releases, organize briefings and exclusive interviews with their bosses...

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant, in particular, the destruction of most of the obstacles that stood in the way of communication with the Western world. Business, scientific, trade, and cultural ties have become more active, and foreign tourism has flourished; long - term work of our specialists in institutions of other countries and the operation of joint Russian-foreign enterprises on the territory of Russia have become commonplace. Obviously, this meant the intensification of communication between native speakers of the Russian language and native speakers of other languages, which is an important condition not only for direct borrowing of vocabulary from these languages, but also for introducing native speakers to international (and more often - created on the basis of English) terminological systems - for example, in such areas as computer engineering,computer science, etc. economics, finance, sports, fashion, journalism, etc.

So in the Russian language - first in the professional environment, and then outside of it-there were terms related to computer technology (as mentioned above), the names of sports (new or new names): windsurfing, skateboard, arm wrestling, kickboxing, freestyle, etc. Anglicisms are also breaking holes in the old naming systems: for example, the extra time when playing football or hockey is increasingly called overtime, the second game after a draw is called a playoff, and even the traditional fighter in kickboxing is replaced by the Anglicism fighter. Many economic and financial terms such as barter, broker, voucher, dealer, distributor, investment, marketing, monetarism, futures loans, etc. are familiar to everyone. Many of them were borrowed long ago, but were mainly used by specialists. However, as the phenomena denoted by these terms became acutely relevant for the entire society, highly specialized terminology went beyond the professional environment and began to be used in the press, in radio and television programs, and in the oral speech of ordinary native speakers.

Active borrowing of new and expanding the scope of use of previously borrowed foreign language vocabulary also occurs in less specialized areas of human activity-it is enough to recall such widely used words as image, presentation, nomination, sponsor, video, show (and their derivatives:

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video clip, video equipment, videotape, video salon; show business, talk show. showman), thriller, hit, disco, disc jockey and many others.

Socio-psychological factors also contribute to such a massive and relatively easy penetration of foreign neologisms into the literary language. Many native speakers consider a foreign word more prestigious in comparison with the corresponding word of their native language: the presentation looks more respectable than the usual Russian presentation, exclusive is more refined than exclusive, top models are more elegant than the best models, although, I must say, there is a certain semantic separation of "own" and "foreign" words: presentation - this is a grand presentation of a movie, book, etc.; exclusive is most often an interview, and you can hardly say an exclusive dumbass about someone or exclaim: What an exclusive cheese\-you can hardly do it.

The perceived greater social prestige of a foreign-language word, compared to the native one, sometimes causes a phenomenon that can be called an increase in rank: a word that in the source language refers to an ordinary, "ordinary" object, in the borrowing language is applied to an object that is more significant and more prestigious in one sense or another. So, the French word boutique means "shop, small shop", and being borrowed by our fashion designers and merchants, it takes on the meaning of "fashion store":

Yudashkin clothing is sold in boutiques in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Approximately the same thing happens with the English word shop: in Russian, shop is not applied to any store, but only to one that sells prestigious goods, mainly of Western production (no one will call an ordinary grocery store a shop). English hospice" shelter, almshouse " turns into a hospice-an expensive hospital for hopeless patients with maximum comfort, which facilitates the process of dying. And even the Italian puttana, once in Russian, does not mean any prostitute (as in Italian), but mainly currency.

How can we assess the current intensification of the borrowing process? How to relate to the fact that foreign words often displace the words Russian, native? Maybe some restrictive measures are needed to prevent, say, a journalist or TV announcer from using a foreign-language word, if there is an equivalent Russian one?

Before answering these questions, let's look at which areas of communication are most affected by foreign language influence.

Most often, new foreign words can be found in the press and in other media - for example, on television, in programs dedicated to economic or political life, fashion, music, cinema, and sports. In oral public speech - for example, in

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radio and television interviews on everyday topics, in speeches at parliamentary sessions-the use of foreign words-neologisms is often accompanied by reservations such as: so-called monetarism, as it is now commonly expressed, electorate, etc., since, focusing on the mass listener, the speaker feels a connection with him more directly and acutely than the author of a newspaper or magazine article. Some of the loanwords are used not only in their direct meanings, but also figuratively and metaphorically: TV marathon, resuscitation of the Russian economy, biased press, political beau monde, rating of lies, etc., and this phenomenon is also typical, mainly for the language of mass media.

Everyday speech does not experience any noticeable influx of foreign words, and this is understandable: being mostly bookish or special words, borrowings are used mainly in the genres of book speech, in texts of a scientific and technical nature. In everyday communication, however, foreign-language words can play the role of original quotations: a communicatively relevant term belonging to a special field can be quoted, deliberately played out, distorted, be a reason for puns, etc. (it is enough to recall what happened in the very recent past with the words democrat and privatization: they gave rise to the formation of such "derivatives" as shitocrats, house stealers, privatisation, etc.).

Social differences in attitudes to foreign words, especially new ones, also deserve attention and study. Here, such characteristics of native speakers as age, level of education, and occupation are important: older people are on average less tolerant of "foreign" vocabulary than young people; with an increase in the level of education, learning loanwords is easier; representatives of technical professions pay less attention to what word they see or hear in the text, - Russian or a foreign language than representatives of the "humanitarian" professions. I emphasize: this is on average, in general, but it is also possible to have a more complex attitude to foreign-language words. For example, a specialist may not notice the foreign language of terms that are used in their own professional sphere, and may react negatively to foreign-language terminology in other areas of activity and communication.

Now let's try to answer these questions.

Regarding the intensification of the borrowing process: don't panic. They often talk and write about the "foreign language flood" flooding the Russian language, about the dominance of foreigners, under the yoke of which it is dying, and such statements give rise to a sense of hopelessness. But we must not forget that language is a self-developing mechanism, the action of which is regulated by certain rules. -

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patterns. In particular, language-and its literary form in particular-is able to purify itself, to get rid of functionally superfluous, unnecessary things.

This also happens with foreign-language words. In any case, the history of the Russian language shows exactly this property. Who now knows the words proprietor (owner), indigestion (indigestion), influenza (flu), amanta (beloved), supirant. (admirer, admirer), repantir (a woman's hairstyle with curls hanging down on both sides of the face), suspension (suspicion) and many others that were used in the Russian language of the XIX century (and some even at the beginning of the present century)? It is unlikely that decrees were issued that ordered these words to be banished from Russian speech - they are outdated, they were replaced by themselves as something unnecessary. On the other hand, how much did the purists of the past achieve by calling for the prohibition of the use of words such as egoism (instead of this, yachestvo was suggested), quote (reference, excerpt were suggested as synonymous substitutes), pose (instead of teleposition was invented), compromise (instead of this, it was recommended to say: expose in an unfavorable form), ignore (V. I. Dahl considered that this is "an impermissible word") etc.?

Of course, excessive and inappropriate use of foreign words is unacceptable, but excessive and inappropriate use of any word is also harmful. Of course, neither linguistic science nor the public should sit idly by, dispassionately watching how the native language is clogged with foreign language. But you can't do anything with bans here. We need systematic and painstaking scientific and educational work, the ultimate goal of which is to foster a good language taste. And good taste is the main condition for the correct and appropriate use of language tools, both "foreign", borrowed, and "own", native.

...And yet: how to answer the question of L. Chukovskaya, which ends her article? Is the Russian language still alive today? He is alive, there is no doubt about it, and he is still, as Gogol put it, "alive as life", only the forms of this "liveliness" and vitality change. And this is quite natural and natural: time changes everything, even such a conservative system as literary, normalized language.

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