The System of Nicknames in a Dialect Speaker’s Onomasticon

Abstract

The article aims to provide a multidimensional analysis of the nicknames system in the idiolect of a speaker of one of the Russian dialects of the Middle Ob River area. This research is carried out within the project of the Tomsk School of Dialectology focusing on the language of a dialect female speaker, on both her typical and individual characteristics. The article analyzes the stock of nicknames in the individual lexicon, the ways of word formation, the motivations of naming, the specificity of neutral and emotive lexical units and the character of their functioning in the informant’s speech (i.e. frequency, degree of integration, spheres of communication, functions in speech). The comparison of the collected material with other studies based on dialectal data of other regions reveals the peculiarities of nicknames extracted from the speech of the Siberian woman. These distinctive features of nicknames are typical for all Russian dialects speakers, however, they prove to be modified in idiolects. Among the properties of the anthroponymicon which are characteristic to a rural society the author mentions: the peripheral character of nicknames in relation to the personal names system; their orientation to rural society members; the capacity of the nicknames’ motivational features and connotations to reflect personal characteristics significant for dialect speakers; the usage of nicknames primarily for the purpose of identification, characterization and estimation; their orientation to the popular communication etiquette rules. Among the individual features of the informant’s language the author points out: the informant’s disinclination for nickname production; her regular metalinguistic reflection on the usage of nicknames; the emergence of the majority of nicknames in citations and indirect speech. The author argues that the personological approach to the study of nicknames is important for understanding the speaker’s personality and the language culture they belong to.

Keywords

• Russian language
• anthroponymy
• nicknames
• idiolect
• language personality
• Siberian Russian dialects