Foreigners’ review of the Soviet film as a genre of Runet

Abstract

Based on the material of Internet blogs, the article examines a genre that has become widespread and recognizable – a review of foreigners on Soviet films (FRF). The author shows the complex pragmatic (double authorship, contradictory intentional structure) and conceptual (cross-cultural communication, different value pictures of the world) nature of this genre. The content centers of the FRF genre – foreign authors, a Russian-speaking author, the film itself and the rating scales used by the authors – are considered as genre-forming. Accordingly, four micro-studies of the FRF genre are being carried out. It is shown that one of the main content principles of the FRF is oppositionness, which stems, firstly, from the dual authorship of the FRF: the author of the original statement about the Soviet film in English and the Russian-speaking author, who selects, translates and sometimes comments on these statements of foreigners, creating the actual text FRF in Russian. Behind the speech activity of the authors are different cultural pictures, values, rating scales, ideas about genres, content, technology, etc. of films, including the knowledge of the rules for writing review texts. Secondly, a foreigner evaluates the phenomenon of a culture alien to them. A foreign author appears as a bearer of the “world” culture (a set of knowledge about iconic works of culture), a system of values, assessments; competencies in terms of writing film reviews; knowledge about Russian/Soviet culture (including cinema), including stereotypes (this “knowledge” is often flawed: it contains lacunae and errors, which is of particular interest to the reader). The oppositionness of the FRF leads to the use of various, often contradictory rating scales. The article also presents the linguistic analysis of the means of expressing the assessment.

Keywords

• foreigners’ review of the soviet film
• genre
• intercultural communication
• dual authorship
• rating scales