The Russian Context: The Culture Behind the Language

by Eloise M. Boyle (Editor), Eloise M. Boyle, Sam G. Bluefarb

The Russian Context defines Russian culture by describing the limits of the common (high) culture as it is referred to in everyday language. By high culture we mean literature, art, science, history, and we also include proverbs, government, and geography. This is not, however, the history of historians, the science of scientists, or the art of art critics. It is the background of information one educated Russian expects of another when they speak. Its appearance in language is taken as the evidence of the culture. The Russian Context is a collectively authored monograph which aims to quantify the minimum level of cultural literacy necessary for serious foreign learners of Russian to appreciate and function properly in the Russian cultural context. The book covers the full spectrum of Russian culture and is bundled with a CD-ROM disk enriched by nearly 1,800 graphic and sound files.

Genres: Reference, Russia

726 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

Reviews

[Kris]

I'm still about halfway through reading this book. It's a bit of an undertaking and I can't recommend it to anyone who doesn't already speak at least some Russian, but it'd be tremendously helpful to any American who's trying to get over the hump of speaking Russian idomatically.

Above all, this book gives some historical and cultural context to spoken and written Russian. Idioms, proverbs, turns of phrase and things that just don't make sense to a non-native speaker are all dissected and analyzed linguistically. When relevant, historical background is given, often showing why and how the word or phrase came to be.

I'll have more to say when I finish reading it. Until then, I definitely recommend this book to students of Russian.

[Lynn]

Very very informative - stuff you just don't find elsewhere.