Afanasy Matveevich Selishchev as a sociolinguist-chronicler of the revolutionary era. Part I: From Slavic studies to the search for new approaches to studying languages and ethnic cultures (to the 140th anniversary of the birth)

The article aims to analyse the philological legacy of the outstanding Russian Slavist A. M. Selishchev (1886– 1942) from the perspective of the ethno-sociological ideas in linguistics which were relevant in the 1910s–1920s. Another goal is to show the scientist’s contribution to the development of a new field of humanities knowledge during the period of transformation of scientific paradigms. The article emphasises that the early 20th century marked a turning point in the formation of linguistic traditions. The research focus shifted from comparative studies towards the synchronic approach to the study of linguistic phenomena (I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay – F. de Saussure). After the revolution this trend grew stronger. Extralinguistic factors contributed to increasing scholarly interest in sociolinguistic issues. New methods and approaches to linguistic fact analysis were developed (S. I. Kartsevsky, Ye. D. Polivanov, A. M. Selishchev), and non-codified speech was studied (A. G. Gornfeld, S. I. Ozhegov, B. A. Larin, A. M. Selishchev). The paper examines the scholar’s early works on Slavonic studies, revealing his interest in political linguistics and the issues of language and culture mixing. The second major focus is the analytical review of the achievements of A. M. Selishchev’s Siberian "expedition" undertaken in search of linguistic exotica. His books "The Transbaikal Old Believers: The Semeiskie" (1920) and "A Dialectological Sketch of Siberia" (1921) are interpreted in the context of ethno-sociolinguistic issues. The article also discusses A. M. Selishchev’s ideas about Chuvash-Russian bilingualism and his observations of the formation of a new cultural tradition in the post-revolutionary period. The outstanding linguistic personality of A. M. Selishchev as a sociolinguist-chronicler is characterised. The article utilises biographical, descriptive, source critical, sociolinguistic, comparative, textual criticism and cultural-historical methods. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of A. M. Selishchev’s initial steps in the sociological study of language for understanding relevant communicative processes in speech practice. It is noted that in the early 1920s, he began writing his major sociolinguistic work "The Language of the Revolutionary Era: From Observations of the Russian Language in Recent Years (1917–1926) ", which marked a new stage in his research work.

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