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For a long period in history, the border between Russian Empire and China was a place of constant and intensive cultural and language contacts, which resulted in the emergence of the Russian-Chinese Pidgin. In the 19th century it was used by no less than one million people around the border with China, in an area of more than 3,000 kilometers long. The grammatical analysis of Russian-Chinese Pidgin reveals several features (e.g. using the imperative as a basic verb form), which can be interpreted not only linguistically but sociologically as well, because they are intertwined with the social positions of the contact groups and their attitudes towards each other. Interestingly, features found in the pidgin's grammar have certain parallels in foreigner-directed talk used nowadays by Russian speakers when communicating with Chinese speakers in the border area, which may indicate there are rather stable linguistic stereotypes associated with these contact situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows that English in modern Russia, like in many other Expanding Circle countries, is predominantly used in a mix with Russian in the creative (poetic, aesthetic, imaginative, or innovative) function in various domains. In this article, the peculiarities of the creative use of English in the Russian context are highlighted, and the article also discusses the semantic and pragmatic aspects of English-Russian language play, demonstrating that English can be played on either just for entertainment or for conveying complex ideological meanings, determined by controversial attitudes to Westernization and Englishization in Russian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the Russian author's pessimistic views and beliefs regarding modern literary critics. It cites that the traditional literary criticism used to focus on the three big issues on commentary, philology, and informational content. It contends that in modern criticism, the commentary becomes optional with the addition of jargons and devalued terms that makes the literary criticism vague, incomprehensible, and unquestionable. It adds that modern literary criticism moves from thick reading materials to newspapers, with prevalent cheap and unethical name-calling and mudslinging.

Analyzes the development of Russian criminal language based on the characterization of the Soviet prison argot by author J.C. Lind. How Lind described the Soviet prison system or Gulag; Background on the use of criminal jargons; Details of the rise of interjargonization; Relationship between the argot of the 20th century and earlier argotic language.