We analyse a number of issues of linguistic folklore studies related to determining the status of the language of folklore texts in comparison with the national language and dialect. The language of Kostroma folklore is fundamentally sub-dialect, but at the same time it has some regional features related to the existence of genres of oral folk art in a certain territory and due to the ancient beliefs of the indigenous population of the region. The specific features of a regionally marked word reveal themselves in the context of the artistic, journalistic and scientific works of Kostroma writers and local historians of the late 19th – 20th centuries (A.O. Ablesimov,
N.A. Nekrasov, А.N. Ostrovsky, S.V. Maksimov, I.M. Kasatkin, E.V. Chestnyakov, N.N. Vinogradov, V.I. Smirnov, A.V. Gromov, etc.). The semantic-stylistic, structural, functional features of some folklorisms reveal themselves in the synchronic and diachronic aspect, the texts by
A.O. Ablesimov, V.I. Smirnov, A.V. Gromov. The existence of these folklorisms characterize most North Russian dialects, including the number of Kostroma.

The purpose of this article is to identify and to analyze semantics of the specific terminological system of people’s Orthodoxy from the standpoint of Russian dialectology and ethnic linguistics. The study substantiates and proves the hypothesis of G.P. Fedotov that Russian spiritual poems reaction at the categories of Christian theology is not outdated; they can be fixed not only in different types of folklore and everyday text, but also developed on the lexical material of Russian folk dialects. The novelty of the approach to the allocation of ideological constants in the national language is due to the following material of the study: dialect lexical units associated with the belief of the traditional peasant population of Russia. At the same time, not only the data of dictionaries are presented, but also unique data of the regional dictionary of national Orthodoxy collected by the author in the territory of the modern Tambov region. We trace the peculiar folk philosophy of word-making: reveal the semantic categories of mental spirituality that determined the individuality and sections of the vocabulary of the religious sphere; prove their influence on the formation of dialect data and their generalization into a single system of folk Church vocabulary. As a result, we reveal the possibilities of using ethno-linguistic semiotics to describe the vocabulary of faith and Church. The proposed categorical approach can become a universal scenario of description, covering the dialect lexical corpus of the terminological system of Orthodoxy.

We analyze lexemes in the Russian language, representing the idea of the family. The analysis materials are Russian folk tales from the collection of A.N. Afanasyev and author's tales of A.S. Pushkin, L.N. Tolstoy, A.M. Gorky and S.Y. Marshak. The concept of “family” in Russian folk and author's tales is represented by central and peripheral lexemes. The central lexemes are generally accepted, actively used lexemes (the immediate environment of a person: mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, son, brother, daughter, sister), and peripheral lexemes in Russian folk and author's tales are different (the distant environment of a person: relatives, relatives, relatives, friends, inner circle, etc.). Central lexemes objectify the idea family in Russian folk and author's tales and differ from each other; peripheral lexemes objectify the idea of the family and have similarities in their use. Tales of Russian authors pay more attention to the wife/mother in the family in comparison with Russian folk tales, because according to Russian family traditions the wife always “holds” the family.

We study the issues of rhetorical skill and speech culture. We briefly analyze rhetoric development in Russia, note the features of it in the 19th century, consider academic and judicial eloquence, contribution of lawyers to the development of rhetoric. This allowed to raise national rhetoric to a new stage of development as aexemplefied with mastery of public speeches, speech persuasion. We identify the features of the Soviet oratory. The Soviet mastery of public speech is a completely unique scientific and theoretical applied art aimed at agitation and promotion of the Soviet way of life. The further development of rhetoric and theory of speech culture is due to social and economical and cultural transformations that have occurred in Russian society. This led to the need to create a fundamentally new theoretical concept, which is based on the close relationship and interaction of the substantive aspects of rhetoric, literature theory and speech culture. At the same time, only the focus of their consideration and study changed. Therefore, the modern speech situation evaluated in the Russian society ambiguously and should take into account not only the national traditions of studying rhetoric and the speech culture theory, but also the practical experience of the foreign approach, first of all, rhetoric, as well as the achievements of psycholinguistics, information theory, speech acts, national specifics of etiquette. The main thing that unites rhetoric and culture of speech is their purpose, and they differ in particular substantive aspects of their study and teaching.

This research is based on the modern theory of interpretation. We describe the relationships between both parts of compound adjectives with the animal names. We study the formation of secondary meanings of these animal names, depending on the semantic structure of the adjective. We discover 5 types of structures with an animal name as a first part. The second part contains either the feature of animal or somatic-derived adjective or simply animal name-enhanced trait. This part can have both primary and secondary value. So, the purpose of the research is the analysis of the possibility of forming the secondary meanings of these compound adjectives. Since the adjective denotes not an object but a feature, the research contains several examples of its use in texting. There are also some examples of the language usage of the exploratory adjectives, because the context may affect the peculiarities of meaning of adjectives.

We analyze the linguistics and legal nature of the legal discourse of various types of legal activity: law-making, law-realization, as a result of which we reveal new formal and linguistic features of legal texts. On the example of article 358 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on ecocide we reveal a number of shortcomings: the choice of the wrong member of the synonymous series and the non-specific content of the sanction. Revealed certain linguistic shortcomings can become an obstacle to the successful use of this legal norm in the process of its implementation. The weak development of lawyers’ linguistic skills, which they need for the proper exercise of their authorities, the inability to adequately express the thought can lead to infringement of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of citizens. Textual shortcomings, as well as gross linguistic errors, reduce the effectiveness of Russian legislation, make it difficult to understand the essence of the legal norm. To solve these problems, it is necessary to conduct a competent linguistic examination, which will increase the text indicators of the regulatory act. The prospects of interaction of legal and linguistic sciences are reasonable due to the emergence of new directions of interaction of jurisprudence with various linguistic interdisciplinary directions (semiotics, socio- and psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, etc.).

We consider religious oikonyms of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. We analyze the specifics of formation of rural toponyms on the basis of cult and religious lexicon and also establish the originality of their lexical meaning. We note that religious oikonyms have a specific place on the Russian toponymic map as they represent the church importance in the Nizhny Novgorod Region and contain the memory of the Christian culture of the Russian people. The inhabited places naming as churches and religious holidays was a productive process in the 19th century and nowadays there are still religious oikonyms in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. In the researched territory the toponyms of religious semantics were not renamed therefore many settlements kept sacral names. We prove that geographical names with Orthodoxy origins reflect not only historical and social, ethnocultural, but also and language features of the Russian ethnos. We conclude that religious oikonyms study on material of different regions of Russia allows the researcher to reveal existentional values of the villager, namely – what Saints in the area were esteemed more, what religious holidays were not indifferent to the people both pragmatically and spiritually.

We present a study of legislative regulation of toponymical processes in the subjects of the Russian Federation from 1994 to the present as exemplified Voronezh Region. We analyze regulatory legal acts of the Voronezh Region, which changed the toponymical system of the region (renaming, abolishing, merging, changing the status of individual settlements, changing the boundaries of municipalities). The purpose of the study is to show the role of legislative (representative) bodies of state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation in regulating naming processes in regional toponymy using the example of the Voronezh Regional Duma, which is a permanently acting supreme and the only legislative (representative) body of state power in the Voronezh Region. We conclude that it is necessary to establish uniform rules, norms and requirements for the names of geographic objects, the deviation from the established rules creates inconvenience for the population and investors, complicates the work of state bodies and local governments. In conclusion, we note that there are not all official changes of the Voronezh Region toponymicon in modern regional reference books and toponymical dictionaries, also there are not always the full details of a given regulatory legal act, according to which the settlement changed its status, was named or renamed, therefore it has become necessary nowadays to prepare and publish the “Toponymical Dictionary of the Voronezh Region”, which takes into account mentioned changes.

We consider genre typology of documentary novels of “Neue Sachlichkeit”: a “report” novel, a “novel of fact” and a documentary montage novel. The proposed classification is based on the different nature of the interaction of narrative and document in these types of novels. In the “report” novel the narration is conducted from the point of view of the observer, the literary text appears as a testimony, the document of an era. The “novel of fact” is based on real documents that are partially or fully integrated into the artistic whole. In the montage novel fragments of documentary material and narrative are connected with each other associatively, resulting in a fragmentary image of the world. We analyze the novels of 1920s – early 1930s by J. Roth, A. Doeblin, E. Ottwalt, E. Reger, R. Brunngraber and E. Koeppen. We substantiate the conception, that the problem of cognition acquires special importance in the documentary-fiction novels of “Neue Sachlichkeit”. On the one hand, the hero of the novels is trying to understand the changed social reality. On the other hand, documentary-fiction novels of “Neue Sachlichkeit” require special way of reading: they are designed to activate the reader's perception, to teach the reader to recreate a complete picture of reality based on the comparison of different ways of its image: narrative, evidence and documents.

On the one hand, we compare the textual version of Y. Bondarev’s novel “Choice” with the visual version – an adaptation of the novel by director V. Naumov, the comparison has begun in previous published works, on the other hand, we comprehend the spiritual and moral content of this work, in particular, through such a key component of Russian literature as the mask. Its metaphysical essence is revealed, we give the statements of Russian religious thinkers in this connection. We consider some key characters of the novel – Ilya Ramzin, Vladimir Vasiliev, Maria. We also trace the novel characters thoughts about coming tragic apostasy of being and of civilization processes tragedy as a whole in the spiritual and moral aspect. This connects with the concept “masquerade” and also has a deeper, cultural and axiological significance, we consider it connected to some traditions and predictions by F.M. Dostoevsky.

The material of the presented study is the novel by the modern writer Dina Rubina “Style of Leonardo”. The aim of the study is to analyze the novel in its continuity with the magical realism traditions. We define the features of magical realism in the novel: a combination of the surreal and the everyday, a mystical acceptance as a fact, complicated chronotope, prospection and retrospection, innuendo and mystery in characters description and fate, polyphonism of storytelling, mythologism, appeal to popular consciousness, existential issues and open end. Using comparative analysis we establish that this tradition is dominant in the novel. The novel “Style of Leonardo” is characterized with syncretism. We consider the “mirror” layer of the novel in detail, from the analysis of real mirrors to the principle of reflected, irrational space. We present general characters features in the novel, these unite destinies and image principles of world literature characters, traditionally regarded within the framework of magical realism. Such issues as the definition of magical realism boundaries and its features, as well as the definition of the place of Dina Rubina’s novel “Style of Leonardo” in the system of directions and trends are relevant for modern literary criticism.

Referring to the past era often intends to show the social and political system and, accordingly, focus is on the opinion of philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, etc. In this case, often on the sidelines is a person, his feelings, and attitude. This is evident in the attitude to the recent Soviet past of our country. In this regard, along with the coverage of the problem of time fixation in the artistic consciousness, we analyze the spiritual life of the transitional period, the main feature of which is the contradictory assessment of the 70-year history of the USSR. And it is not only about the nihilistic attitude, in the simplified denial of the Soviet experience, but also on ignoring the spiritual quest, the history of the formation of images and meanings inherent in our nation. The past time is not only economics and ideology, it is also artistic culture. Nihilistic attitude to the Soviet era is the way to oblivion of a huge cultural layer. It is an axiom which for some reason needs to be proved again and again. The social and cultural approach to the understanding of the past and present time has a greater tolerance in judgments and allows to fill the gaps in the public consciousness, to present spiritual life in diversity and uniqueness. The works of words, screen masters, sociologists conclusions contribute to the understanding of the recent past and the rapidly changing reality of the transition time.

The authors analyze the concept of «cultural environment», highlight its components on the example of the Tambov Governorate, show its progress. The libraries of the noble estates played an important role in the development of cultural life in province, performed memorial, informational and socializing functions. We reveal the trends in the development of personal collections, the core of the library fund, which allowed to determine the structure of the cultural heritage – publications distributed over the 19th–21th centuries. We make the conclusion about most popular authors, books and reading fashion. The authors reconstructed an objective picture of establishing and functioning of estate libraries in this period as an element of the cultural environment. A number of technologies for creating personal libraries can be used at present. Family reading techniques are applicable in promoting reading, books and book culture.

We analyze A.V. Vysheslavtsev life history and creativity, and consider the importance of his personal library for professional pursuits and artistic hobbies. It is shown that reading played an important role in the upbringing of aesthetic taste and love of the beautiful in the Vysheslavtsev family. The estate library of the family estate Volkhonshchina accumulated a huge number of publications in Russian and foreign languages. Great importance in replenishing the rare foreign books collection played A.V. Vysheslavtsev’s uncle, who bought literature in the course of his foreign trips. On the basis of biographical research, the circumstances of the appearance of “Essays with quill and pencil out of circumnavigation of the world” we reveal their artistic and scientific value. We study the reasons of A.V. Vysheslavtsev’s foreign travels, and give the review of the books bought abroad. The analysis of the thematic composition of the library shows the diversity of readers’ interests of its owners. There were books on the history of European, Byzantine and Russian art. Collected for several decades, this collection can act as one of the elements of knowledge transfer to the Russian province. On the basis of studying foreign books A.V. Vysheslavtsev built scientific activity, prepared a number of serious studies on the Western art history. The heritage of A.V. Vysheslavtsev, without a doubt, has important historical, cultural and local history significance, reveals the creative laboratory of one of the most famous art critics of Russia of the 19th century.

We study G.R. Derzhavin's personal library. The study is relevant due to the high historical and cultural significance of Gavriil Romanovich’s book collections. Reconstruction of his original collection – one of the most important areas of research of book culture of the late 18th century and, of course, the key story of the study of poet creativity sources. We analyze the thematic diversity of the preserved books, the history of the Derzhavin collection, its fate after the death of G.R. Derzhavin. Derzhavin’s library was transferred to D.V. Polenov – well-known diplomat and bibliophile of his time, and then entered the Naryshkin special library of Tambov. The study of the qualitative and quantitative composition of the transferred collections allowed to establish the safety of 293 volumes from his collection. The collection is distinguished by special brown leather bindings with flyleaf of decorative paper (presumably handmade), a lot of tray copies. Part of the journals convolutes from Derzhavin’s collection are bound in hard cardboard paper with a rectangular label-sticker of the early 19th century, reflecting the name of the journal, the year of publication and superexlibris “G. D.” (Gavriil Derzhavin). Analysis of Derzhavin's books from the library demonstrated a significant diversity of reading interests of G.R. Derzhavin. His library has preserved many rare lifetime copies of odes, letters, epigrams, messages of famous authors of the 18th century, a huge number of periodicals. The method of instance analysis of literature made it possible to identify and analyze the author’s marginalia on the poet’s books, their significance for the characteristics of the poet’s literary work.

This cultural research is the analysis of the foreign photographers’ activities in Siberia from the second half of the 19th century to the present time. We consider the issue of dehumanization of Russian society and culture by means of foreign photography. On the basis of real photographs published on the Internet, the author compiled a list of all Western photographers who visited Siberia and proved their destructive and countercultural, political, and non-artistic goals aimed at weakening the Russian state and Russian people dehumanization; we confirmed it by the final relevant foreign publications. Some research materials are documents of the State Archive of the Republic of Buryatia and are the first time in scientific discourse. Until now, researchers considered the activities of foreign photographers in Eastern Siberia mainly in the specialty of history, exclusively as a source base positively. The novelty of this cultural research lies in the fact that foreign photography of Eastern Siberia is considered from the perspective of the tasks set for foreign photographers by their foreign customers, as well as from aesthetic and artistic positions. Thus, we prove the negative nature of the foreign photographers’ activities in Eastern Siberia.