Official and officious history of the word oficioz and its derivatives: french-russian language contacts
Pour une histoire officielle et officieuse du mot oficioz et ses dérivés: contacts linguistiques franco-russes
Résumé
In recent decades, we can observe in the Russian language a spread of a word ofitsioz. It appears in dictionaries, but its real use does not correspond to the lexicographic description. Analysis of contexts of the words ofitsioz permits us to determine its semantic variants: 1) UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS: a) ‘official circles’, b) ‘formal sector’, c) ‘official science’, d) ‘official information’, e) ‘official conduct’, f) ‘serious information’, g) ‘serious talks’; 2) COUNTABLE NOUN: h) ‘official publication’, i) ‘representative of official circles, official science’, j) ‘official manufacturer or representative’. The word ofitsioz has a broad meaning which is specified in speech. Its general subject information implies ‘something formal, official’; non-subject information includes three components: a) evaluative, b) functional, c) social. The word word in question refers to the sublanguage, which can be called “non-official”. In synchrony, the noun ofitsioz is the basis of derivational family (antiofitsioz, kontrofitsioz, superofitsioz, and others, altogether 30 units). Rus. ofitsioz and its derivatives come from Lat. officiosus, Fr. officieux. The first word of the family to appear is the adjective ofitsioznyy (before the end of 1860). The noun ofitsioz can be found in use since the beginning of XXth century. In the “Soviet lexicography” ofitsioz and ofitsioznyy receive an ideological interpretation and are flagged as litterary (“ink-horn”). Since 1990 some dictionaries record the changes, but the description is clearly behind the development of the family and word meaning. The noun ofitsioz and its derivatives are actually used as synonyms of word combinations, including the adjective official, e. g., official style, official information, official science, etc. Hence, ofitsioz becomes expressive synonym with ofitsialnost, i. e., it is getting the opposite of its original significance, and it becomes an expressive self-antonym (through enantiosemia). The speech use of other components of the family, derived structurally and semantically from the keyword, is non-normative, whereas the prescriptive uses of the words hardly occur in modern Russian speech.