Ekaterinburg — Sverdlovsk — Ekaterinburg: the city image in the dynamics of a toponymic text

Abstract

The article is devoted to reflecting the image of a city in verbal data — topographic names. The author bases the research upon the ideas of the cultural-semiotic approach to city studies, upon the conception of a city as a text and palimpsest and sets the goal of investigat­ing semantic changes in the toponymic text of Ekaterinburg examined in its historical dynam­ics. The main stages of modification of the Ural city toponymic image are characterized via the metaconcept of chronotopos. As a tool of linguocultural analysis per se, generalised onomasio­logical, semantic models, or cultural semantic codes, are used. These involve landscape-distinctive, social-functional and social-symbolic codes. The paper defines the specificity of the realisation of cultural semantic codes in the toponymy (urbanonymy) of Ekaterinburg relative to three chronotopic junctures determined by the city renaming landmark acts — Ekaterin­burg, Sverdlovsk, Ekaterinburg. Topical meanings are revealed in the toponymic portrait of the city in different periods of its life. The changes that increase in the toponymy in the framework of one chronotopic juncture and contribute to the transference of a part of cultural experience to the next historic period are traced. In the image of Ekaterinburg represented in its toponymic text, traits of the city’s territorial identity underpinned by its natural and geo­graphical, economic and social factors are indicated.

Keywords

• city image
• toponymy
• toponymic text
• cultural semantic code
• landscapedistinctive code
• social-functional code
• social-symbolic code
• toponymic landscape
• ekaterinburg
• sverdlovsk