These are the words our grandparents remember
The SPbU Representative Office in Spain invites you to the online lecture "These are the words our grandparents remember", read by Ekaterina Zorina, Associate Professor of the Russian Language Department, PhD in Philology and published researcher.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many once-familiar expressions gradually fell out of use or were replaced by modern words that more accurately reflected the new era. What kind of language surrounded a Soviet citizen all their life and has now all but disappeared?
People, physical objects and words are subject to the invisible and inexorable passage of time. The consciousness of each new generation is formed in a new reality that changes rapidly every year. Isn’t it interesting to see young people watching Soviet films and asking questions about the most mundane and trivial details? From the point of view of modern psychology, it is also interesting to analyse the characters of Soviet cinema and the way in which they used language to arouse the audience’s affection, compassion or pity.
Today, younger generations may find it difficult to understand some expressions that were commonplace in the Soviet era. During the lecture we will talk about words that have fallen out of use: "commission shop", "schlager", "bourgeois", '"new boots "dropped" in the shop', etc. How can we express the same things today?
Lecturer
Ekaterina Zorina graduated from the Faculty of Philology at St Petersburg University. After graduating in 2005, she joined the Department of Russian Language at SPbU, where she teaches courses on the stylistics and syntax of modern Russian, morphemics and word formation, business Russian and business communication to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Ekaterina Zorina supervises the practical training of the students of the Faculty of Philology, as well as the coursework and theses of the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students. Since 2022, she has been the head of the SPbU Linguistic Clinic and a member of the methodological committee of the SPbU School Olympiad.
Ekaterina Zorina’s academic and practical interests include syntax and stylistics of modern Russian, linguistic analysis of fiction, modern Russian literature, the works of Vladimir Nabokov, issues of Russian as a state language and applied rhetoric (communicative soft skills).
The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia.
The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.