Inflection and anger

^{This article was published in Computerra magazine on May 27, 2008. The author is Sergey Golubitsky, the leader of the “Dovecote” column. I just adapted the article a bit for Habr.}

Most of all I am saddened by the lack of understanding of the need for a totalitarian style of writing. In fact, permissive categorization is just a way to overcome the monstrous entropy of Runet, in which the need to say against is a sense of virtual life for a long time! Because of this entropy, it became impossible to work: it is impossible to find anything, it is impossible to get to the objectively meaningful information, because instead of a calm statement of facts, as is customary in any domain except RU, we stumble upon a bad erosion of the topic, a total anarchy of opinions, a hysterical squeal and roar

It is necessary for someone to declare on the forum that, say, "The XYZ program is the most convenient for a specific task," as the lightning speed from all sides will pour crap into the address: 1) of the XYZ program; 2) the author; 3) his relatives; 4) his sexual orientation; 5) its national identity, and everything is bad - from the Jews (this goes without saying) to the Chinese, Japanese, Americans, Hindus and 184 more nations. In parallel, the longest list of supposedly alternatives to the XYZ program is issued to the surface, each of which is better on its head, and therefore AM / KG and would not go all in the ass !!!

The described behavior is the central Runet pattern , its semantic backbone, the creed, the life purpose and the main form of self-affirmation for the inhabitants of the virtual space. Cause? There are several of them.
The first lies on the surface: the Runet’s behavioral pattern reflects real-life neurosis, in which 150 million Genossen, along with their children and grandchildren, were completely exhausted, deprived of tangible assets, lumpenized, and turned into nonvarying rubbish (this is when nuclear physicists who did not have time or were too lazy to slip out of this cesspool in the early 90s, today they are working as security guards in parking lots - recently he met one such and bitterly spoke).
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It’s impossible to rebel in real life because of the lack of passionate impulses in the blood, which were systematically eliminated during 70 years of Soviet power, therefore the most energetic part of the nation moves into the liberal space of the Runet, where it is relatively safe to wave your hands and sprinkle saliva violently. Hence the unprecedented, unprecedented anywhere in the world charge of hatred and total negative, which we see in the blogosphere, at the forum and news conferences.

In addition to the social cause of pathological entropy of the Runet, there is another - the internal structure of the Russian language, which does not allow to formalize communication. It is this reason, in my opinion, that plays the first violin in Runet’s destructive polyphony, so I’ll dwell on it in more detail.
Russian language is ideally suited for poetic creativity for two reasons: infinite inflection and infinite synonymy. In poetry, the meaning of which, as is known, in the transfer of the author’s mood and sensual world, flexion and synonymy provide the ideal form for self-expression — flexion enriches the rhyme, synonymy adds “fog”, that is, blurring, vague concepts and images, which instantly enhances its meaning load and thus contributes to the growth of artistic potential (the goal of poetry! - circle closed).
One bad luck: inflection and synonymy painfully discord with the modern information field that has developed in the era of the digital revolution. The main goal and objective of this field is the marginal formalization, which allows you to uniquely convey thoughts and ideas. This is most clearly expressed in any superficial search work, not to mention a serious data mining. Without going into details, I will illustrate a thought on an elementary example of a search, say, on Google or Yandex. It turns out that the search performed in Russian is many times more difficult than the search in the most formalized language of the world - English.
Suppose I need to find information about a certain program and its availability for download. I write in the query line “Program XYZ download” and in a second I get an exhaustive list of sites with links to download the program I need. Without equivocation, variations and unnecessary semantic debris. Now I am performing a request in Russian - “Download program XYZ” - and immediately begins blissful confusion with the native language: “Download?” Or maybe “Download?” Or maybe “Download?” Or maybe - “Flood?” And so further to infinity with almost any word.
If modern search engines somehow cope with language inflections (with all these programs, programs, programs and programs), then before synonymy they retreat in complete impotence. In our example, in addition to the synonymous series of the word “download”, there is still a sea of ​​options for “program”: software, software, software, “this is a miracle”, “utility”, “shareware”, etc.

Yes, you will not find the last example an exaggeration! If, for example, I try to find information about downloading the XYZ program on a forum, blog or conference (especially since the Bakunian one), then I will have to deal with a language twist like "soft" and "this miracle."

What does this mean in practice? The fact that finding information in Russian takes due to inflections and synonymy is much more time than a search in English. Do not think only that the Russian language demonstrates some special wealth against the background of the language of English. There are no inflections in the latter, but the vocabulary is twice as large as Russian: the largest dictionary of the Russian language has 140 thousand words, English - 300 thousand (www.oed.com). What then is the matter? The fact that English has isolated from itself the most formalized semantic core, which is used by a large part of humanity today. At Basic English, they not only communicate in forums, but also speak on the streets of London and New York.

Where is Extended English hiding? In linguistic history, culture and products of high literary creativity - right in those places where children do not appear indigo nose. Try to take some good book - say, Faulkner, and read with knowledge of the language at the secondary school level: you will immediately understand what it is about: eight words out of ten are eight unknowns!

The formalized semantic core of the English language has not only become a universal tool of international communication, but also ideally fit into the information field of the digital revolution. The unequivocal expressiveness of English outweighed all the flaws caused by cryptophorography (when one is written, but completely different is read) and very heavy phonetics (they say that the load on the musculo-jaw apparatus in English is several times greater than the load created by other European languages ​​- look at the mandibles of Americans and understand everything!).

The peculiarity of the Russian language, unfortunately, not only causes difficulties when searching for information, but also creates a neurosis of virtual communication. The Russian language with its poetic polyvalence and vagueness of meanings (the meanings of words change 180 degrees not from the context even, but from simple intonation!) Destroys the creativity of communication, promotes behavior aimed at the adoption at any cost of their own, different from the rest point of view. Not the truth, but its indispensable refutation, preferably with a parallel lowering of the opponent into the mud - this is the main impulse of the modern Russian language consciousness, which has fallen into hysteria because it is impossible to integrate into the information-digital civilization.

Where is the exit? It is impossible to destroy flexion and synonymy, since it would mean to destroy the great and unique Russian language itself.

One thing remains - to struggle with semantic polyvalence.

How does this happen? Avoiding dialogues, abusing superlatives, handing out tough assessments and making categorical statements like “The XYZ program is the best in the world” or “The British Empire is the most terrible evil in the history of mankind”, while still in my right mind, I do not pursue the goal of imposing personal stereotypes on readers . I affirm an alternative form of thinking that somehow opposes the semantic entropy and anarchy that reigns in the modern Russian language field (as I have already said, this entropy has obvious social and political roots).

The meaning of rigorism is not “protrusion of one’s own opinion ahead of the rest of the world,” as deliberate gossip goblins, but a statement of the paradigm of thinking, which in a simplified form reduces to the fact that an unequivocal opinion, statement, statement, even a hundred times erroneous, is much more productive and more constructive the militant clash of hundreds of polyphonic voices, playing off intellectual and emotional divisions in a social group (of any level: from the Internet forum to the whole national community).

I strongly recommend reading the magazine itself and the articles of this author.