Russian Writers of the 19th Century in Russian Language Textbooks for Americans

Abstract

This article considers Russian language textbooks created by American authors for American students in order to identify the attitude of their authors to the creativity of the Russian writers of the XIX century. The article reveals the reasons that prompted its author to use textbooks as research material, and gives their periodization in connection with the growing interest in learning Russian in the United States. The article examines more than 50 textbooks of Russian as a foreign language published in the USA in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to our time; reveals the approach of the American creators of Russian textbooks to the choice of text material and the principles of its presentation in their textbooks. The method of continuous sampling is used to select the contexts containing information about the Russian literature of the XIX century. The author conducts quantitative and qualitative analyses of lexical units containing a cultural component of meaning connected with the Russian writers of the XIX century. One of the conclusions of the analyses is that Russian writers' proper names, names of literary works and genres of Russian literature are of the greatest frequency. Another conclusion is that the general frequency of lexical units associated with the Russian literature of the XIX century in American textbooks of the Russian language is small, which does not allow American students to create a clear impression of the Russian literature and Russian writers of the XIX century.