Semiotic space of the frontier «city N» using the example of Samara of the provincial period (1851–1917)

Abstract

The article analyzes the complex semiosphere of the city of Samara in the second half of the XIX – early XX century, transformed into a provincial center that has no ancient urban history, geographically belonging to the «inner outskirts» of the Russian Empire and combining simultaneously the features of the frontier and the provincial «city of N.» The authors prove that one of the new phenomena of urban socio-cultural life of the era of modernization is fashion, not only as an area responsible for urban costume, but also as a broad program of fashion signs, the assimilation of which led to the transformation of the provincial center, brought into a much larger rural environment, into a kind of «crucible» of culture, pulling under the surrounding space has its own level. It’s easy to be a city where the whole territory is permeated with urban history. But how to develop a set of urban signs of culture where the «wild field» was historically located earlier?

Keywords

• semiotics
• culture
• city
• urbanization
• modernization
• language
• signs
• cultural and educational institutions
• museum
• education
• theatre
• newspaper
• frontier
• «inner outskirts»
• geographical image
• fashion
• «urban citizenship»