Influence of the lingual environment of Bukovyna and Halychyna on the content and structural components of Ukrainian printed advertising at the end of the 19th – early 20th century

Abstract

Background. The concept of linguistic situation, traditionally studied in sociolinguistics, means the totality of all languages used in a country to facilitate communication at all societal levels. Over the past few decades, the problem of the linguistic environment and the simultaneous use of two or more languages in the same geographical space has been studied not only in sociolinguistics but also in urban linguistics, discourse studies and many other branches of the humanities, primarily in the context of the dialogue of cultures. The form of language functioning (or several languages) in a specific geographical space is defined as the linguistic landscape. The term "linguistic (semiotic) landscape" is synonymous with a number of other terms used by modern sociolinguists: linguistic market, linguistic mosaic, ecology of languages, diversity of languages, or linguistic situation, etc. The specific components of the linguistic landscape, as well as the cultural and historical prerequisites for its formation, require deeper investigation using documented linguistic sources from territories where active intercultural and interlingual contacts have been ongoing for a long time. Galicia and Bukovina at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were undoubtedly such territories. An integral component of the urban linguistic landscape of that time, one of its graphic markers and identifiers, was Ukrainian advertising published in Galician and Bukovinian periodicals. The actuality of the study stems from the need to examine the historical, factual, socio-cultural, and linguistic aspects of the formation of the advertising style of the Ukrainian language, particularly in the context of the linguistic situation of Bukovina and Galicia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This will contribute to forming a holistic understanding of the general and specific features of Ukrainian advertising texts of this period and understanding of Ukrainian advertising as a linguistic and cultural phenomenon.

Methods. To study advertising announcements published in Galician and Bukovinian periodicals at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (newspapers “Dilo”, “Bukovyna”, “Dobri Rady”, “Kalendar Prosvity”, “Bukovynsky Kalendar”), the methods of primary source processing, source base sampling, analytical review, descriptive-interpretative, and comparative analysis were applied.

Results. At the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Ukrainian advertising texts aimed at disseminating new knowledge and, at the same time, had to attract the attention of potential clients and influence the psychology of the addressee. These tasks defined the informative and persuasive function of advertising during the studied period, which had all the characteristics of a modern advertising text and included the following main structural elements: 1) headline (in terms of content, these were mainly names of establishments, enterprises, personal names of entrepreneurs); 2) customer appeal c; 3) information block; 4) font and other graphic means of information actualization; 5) signatures and comments; 6) graphic and illustrative components (frame, font, product images, decorative highlighting elements). A characteristic feature of Ukrainian print advertising of the late 19t^h and early 20^th centuries were components determined by interference factors: 1) German or Polish spellings of proper names, product names, contact information; 2) parallel spelling (glossing) of advertised product names in at least two languages; 3) use of borrowings from German, Polish, and Romanian languages, adapted in southwestern dialects or urban koinēs due to lexical interference; 4) application of different graphic and orthographic systems of the Ukrainian language (“maksymovychivka” and “kulishivka”).

Discussion and conclusions. Ukrainian advertising texts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are a component of the linguistic (semiotic) landscape of that time, as they reflect in their graphic and semantic content the functioning of the Ukrainian language in contact with other languages – German, Polish, and Romanian, which for the studied period should be considered co-territorial languages. Foreign language components characterize both the graphics, content, and textual stylistics of Ukrainian advertising of the studied period, thanks to which it emerges as a sociolinguistic and cultural-historical phenomenon reflecting the corresponding period of the development of the Ukrainian literary language. Further research of the general and specific features of Ukrainian advertising of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is necessary for the creation of generalizing theoretical works on advertising studies and specialized dictionaries of Ukrainian advertising.