Description

Raisa Rozina is a leading researcher at the V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and Professor of European Languages, Institute of Linguistics, Russian State Humanities University. A socio-linguist and a specialist in lexical semantics, she is a longtime student of slang and everyday speech in both Russia and the USA. She is the editor-in–chief and co-author of the dictionary Slova s kotorymi my vse vstrechalis’: tolkovyi slovar obshchego russkogo zhargona (Words we have all encountered: An Explanatory dictionary of modern Russian general slang (1995), as well as a compiler of the Tolkovyi slovar russkoi razgovornoi rechi (Explanatory dictionary of Russian everyday speech)–(vol.1 2014; vol.2 in preparation). She has also served as commentator on the works by J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, Sherwood Anderson and other American writers in editions published in English for Russian readers, and translator into Russian of articles by the distinguished Australian linguist Anna Wierzbicka.

In her presentation “Russian life through the prism of everyday speech” Prof. Rozina explores the perspectives of Russian speakers on their everyday existence by analyzing semantic fields of everyday words. She focuses especially on the richest and most suggestive fields, such as FALL, DIRT, GREEDINESS, and ALIENS. Comparison between these semantic fields and corresponding ones in everyday English speech illuminates differences in the mentalities of Russian and English speakers.