A document is the basic unit of official business style. History of official business style in Russia

HISTORY OF OFFICIAL BUSINESS STYLE AND GENRES OF BUSINESS SPEECH 1. Characteristics of official business style: history of formation, linguistic and extralinguistic features

In the field of science, office work and lawmaking, in the means mass media and in politics, language is used in different ways. For each of the listed areas public life its own subtype of Russian is fixed literary language, which has a number of distinctive features at all language levels - lexical, morphological, syntactic and textual. These features form a speech system in which each element is connected with others. This subtype of literary language is called functional style.

The official business style is assigned to the sphere of social and legal relations implemented in lawmaking, economics, management and diplomatic activities. The periphery of business style includes informative advertising, patent style and everyday business speech (statements, explanatory notes, receipts, etc.). Organizational and administrative documentation (ORD) is a type of business writing that most fully represents its specifics. Together with various types legislative speech (license, rules, charter, decree, etc.) ORD is the center of business writing, the core formal business style.

A document is a text that controls the actions of people and has legal significance. Hence the increased requirement for accuracy, not allowing for misinterpretation, placed on the text of documents. Only written speech, prepared and edited, can meet this requirement. In oral speech, it is almost impossible to achieve such a degree of accuracy due to its lack of preparation, spontaneity, and variability. In addition to the requirement of denotative accuracy (denotation is an object or phenomenon of the reality around us, with which a given linguistic unit is correlated), the language of documents is subject to the requirement of communicative accuracy - an adequate reflection of reality, reflection of the author’s thoughts in a speech fragment (sentence, text).

The documents therefore use clichéd standard phrases:

The agreement comes into force from the date of signing.

Pursuant to order No....

Standardization of the language of business papers provides the degree of communicative precision that gives the document legal force. Any phrase, any sentence should have only one meaning and interpretation. To achieve such a degree of accuracy in the text, you have to repeat the same words, names, terms: In case of advance payment, the Customer is obliged to hand over to the Contractor a copy of the payment document certified by the bank or notify him by telegram within three days from the date of payment. If the Customer fails to comply with the requirements of this paragraph, the Contractor has the right, after ten days from the date of signing the contract, to sell the goods.

Detailed presentation in an official business style is combined with analytical expression of actions and processes in the form of a verbal noun:

Since business writing represents an official business style of speech, it is absolutely necessary to consider a number of its specific features.
The official business style stood out before other written styles due to the fact that it served the most important areas state life:
foreign relations, consolidation of private property and trade. The need for written consolidation of contracts, laws, records of debts, registration of the transfer of inheritance began to form a special “language”, which, having undergone many changes, retains its basic distinctive features.
Business documents appeared in Rus' after the introduction in the 10th century. writing. The first written documents recorded in the chronicle are the texts of treaties between the Russians and the Greeks in 907, 911, 944 and 971. And in the 11th century. the first set of laws appears Kievan Rus“Russian Truth” is an original literary monument that allows us to judge the development of the system of legal and socio-political terminology at that time. After “Russkaya Pravda,” the oldest document is considered to be “The Charter of Grand Duke Mstislav Volodimirovich and his son Vsevolod of 1130.”
The letters end with a special formula, which indicates who witnessed the transaction and who affixes the letter with his signature.
Since the 15th century information about who wrote the text becomes the norm, and from the 18th to 18th centuries. – mandatory requisites business letter. State-mandatory language of the 16th–18th centuries. for all its lexical diversity, it is a more standardized, standard language than living spoken language. He introduces into use a number of command formulas that become clichés and clericalisms (to take on bail, this is given in that, to give a confrontation, to put on trial, to inflict reprisals, etc.).
There were more and more documents. The extensive office work of pre-Petrine Rus' required the development of unified approaches to the preparation and processing of documents. The process of unifying the language of documents, which began in Kievan Rus, has received its further development.
And in the “General Regulations” of Peter’s Collegiums, a complete system of documentation standards was given. “General forms”, i.e. document forms provided for design standards, etiquette standards for addressing the addressee indicating rank, title, rank, uniform standards for naming and self-designation. The vocabulary of business language is increasingly moving away from colloquial, live speech, penetrating into it great amount foreign words(province, act, run, appeal, etc.) and terms.
In the 19th century, when the formation of a codified literary language was largely completed, its functional varieties - styles - began to actively form. Documents of official correspondence were obtained in the 19th century. the widest distribution and in quantitative terms significantly surpassed other types of business texts. They were written on official letterhead, included a certain set of details,
Adoption in 1811 " General establishment ministries" consolidates as state form the process of unifying the language of business papers. Actively being formed character traits clerical style: formal-logical organization of the text, impersonal nature of the statement, syntactic cumbersomeness, nominal nature of speech, morphological and lexical uniformity (prevalence of nominative and genitive cases), standardization.
As a result of the reform of office work (rules for the preparation of documentation), the need arose to reform the clerical style, which began to be conceptualized as a task of national importance.
In the 20th century the unification of documents becomes irreversible. New rules for maintaining official documentation were developed: in 1918, a unified form of business letter forms was introduced. In the 20s, work began to create new standards for business writing, and stencil texts appeared.
New era in the process of standardization, machine processing and computerization of office work opened up.
The choice and consolidation in practice of one language variant from several possible ones is justified economically, dictated by the requirements of the increasingly complex economic and socio-political life of society, and technical progress. The use of stable formulas, accepted abbreviations, uniform arrangement of material, document design is typical for standard and template letters, questionnaires, tables, analogue texts, etc., allows you to encode information, assigning certain linguistic means to a typical situation. The so-called analogue texts, forms, forms in which the stencil looks like a formalized text are subject to special standardization.
The process of creating stencil texts consists of allocating constant parts for a group of texts of the same type, containing pre-known information, and spaces for entering changing information.
“The form is a kind of ideal basis for a business paper; when completed, this is the standard that it strives for and achieves. In the form, the rigidity of the form reduces to zero all the possibilities of multiple interpretations,” rightly notes P.V. Veselov, one of the leading specialists in the field of documentary linguistics.
Standardization of the language of documents has developed special types of text organization: stencil, questionnaire, table.
The questionnaire is a collapsed text in the form of nominations of generic correspondence. A table is an even more capacious organization of a document: permanent information is placed in column and sidebar headers (row headers), and variable information is placed in table cells.
These types of text organization can be used in various genres business documentary: the questionnaire method can be used to simulate personnel profiles, orders, reports, explanatory notes; The following types of documents can be presented in tabular form: staffing table, staff structure, vacation schedule, personnel orders. Contracts and business letters are often stenciled. Thus, stencilization determines high degree the informative capacity of the text due to the folding of the statement and the possibility of deciphering (using machine processing as well), expanding it into a complete structure.
The process of standardization and unification covers all levels of language - vocabulary, morphology, syntax, text organization - and determines the originality and specificity of the official business style. Even well-known types of texts (narration, description, reasoning) are modified in a business style, turning into types of presentation of an affirmatively ascertaining or prescriptive-ascertaining nature. Hence the syntactic monotony, lexical homogeneity of speech, and high repetition of words.
Document typing allows you to model text of any type according to the situation. At the same time, the constituent text operates with certain modules, standard blocks, which are clichéd parts of the text (in the texts of contracts this is the representation of the parties, the subject of the contract, the calculation procedure, the obligations and rights of the parties, the validity period of the contract.
These modules are invariably included in the texts of contracts (on the performance of work, on rent, on purchase and sale). The text of the initial module of the contract itself remains virtually unchanged (variations in the terms of the sentence and synonymous substitutions are allowed); the legal terms that define social roles contracting parties.
All the features of the official business style, its iconic nature are determined by the action of the dominant and the function of obligation, which ensures the legal and social regulatory significance of business texts.
Economic necessity and the development of science and technology determine the ever-increasing unification and standardization of documents, on the one hand, and the tendency towards simplification, purification of outdated clerical stamps and clichés of the language of business letters and, more broadly, business correspondence, on the other hand.
The language of business correspondence represents the periphery of the official business style. Along with regulated letters, practice is increasingly included today. business communication unregulated business letters, along with official ones - semi-official ones (congratulatory, advertising), in which the ratio of expression and standard changes in one direction or the other.
Undoubtedly, the official business style, as well as the Russian language in general, has undergone significant changes. Its formation is closely connected with the formation and development of the Russian state, primarily because the sphere of regulation of legal and economic relations created the need to identify a special functional variety of the literary language.
Regulating relations between people, institutions, and countries required written evidence, acts, and documents.

· Business documents appeared in Rus' after the introduction in the 10th century. writing. The first written documents recorded in the chronicle are the texts of treaties between the Russians and the Greeks in 907, 911, 944 and 971. And in the 11th century. The first set of laws of Kievan Rus, “Russian Truth,” appears - an original written monument that allows one to judge the development of the system of legal and socio-political terminology at that time. In the language of "Russkaya Pravda" it is already possible to highlight the peculiarities of word usage and organization of speech, which belong to the characteristic features of business style. This is high terminology, the predominance of composition over subordination in complex sentences, the presence of complex constructions with coordinating conjunctions “and”, “yes”, “zhe”, as well as non-union chains. Of all types of complex sentences, the most widely used are constructions with a subordinate conditional (with the conjunction even - if): In Russian Pravda, terms are already used that indicate the development of legal relations in Ancient Rus': head (killed), golovnik (killer), poslukh (witness), vira (fine), extracted (property), veno vopikoe (bride price), kuna (money). Legal terms represent the most important lexical layer of the language of ancient documents.

· After “Russian Truth”, the oldest document is considered to be “The Charter of Grand Duke Mstislav Volodimirovich and his son Vsevolod of 1130”. The initial formula of this letter “Se az” ... (“Here I am”) from now on becomes an obligatory element (requisite) of ancient Russian letters: “Behold, the great prince Vsevolod gave to St. George (Yuryev Monastery) the Terpug churchyard of Lyakhovichi with land, and with people, and with horses, and forest, and boards, and traps on the catch..." ("from" Letters of Grand Duke Vsevolod Mstislavovich to the Yuryev Monastery of 1125-1137") The letters ended with a special formula, which indicates who was there. a witness to the transaction and who affixes the document with his signature.

· In the “General Regulations” of Peter’s Collegiums, a complete system of documentation standards was given. "General forms", i.e. document forms provided for design standards, etiquette standards for addressing the addressee indicating rank, title, rank, uniform standards for naming and self-designation. The vocabulary of business language is increasingly moving away from colloquial, living speech; a huge number of foreign words (province, act, run, appeal, etc.) and terms penetrate into it.

· In the 19th century, when the formation of a codified literary language was largely completed, its functional varieties - styles - began to actively form. Documents of official correspondence were obtained in the 19th century. the widest distribution and in quantitative terms significantly surpassed other types of business texts. They were written on official letterhead and included a certain set of details. Since 1811, after the adoption of the “General Establishment of Ministries”, the characteristic features of the clerical style were actively formed: formal-logical organization of the text, impersonal nature of the statement, syntactic cumbersomeness, nominal character of speech, morphological and lexical uniformity (prevalence of the nominative and genitive cases), standardization . As a result of the reform of office work (rules for the preparation of documentation), the need arose to reform the clerical style, which began to be conceptualized as a task of national importance.

Department of Documentation Science

DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS STYLE
RUSSIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE

Moscow 2010

Table of contents

Introduction
Language like social phenomenon performs various functions related to one or another sphere of human activity. An important social function of language is the message inherent in the official business style.
The official business style stood out earlier than other written styles because it served the most important areas of state life: external relations, consolidation of private property, etc. The need for written documentation of laws, contracts, and records of debts began to form a special “language”, which, having undergone many changes, still retains its main distinctive features.
The purpose of this course work is a study of the formation of the business style of the Russian literary language from the time of the appearance of writing in Rus' to the present day, as well as an overview of the features of the modern official business style of the Russian language.
The relevance of the course work lies in the fact that the history of the development of the business style of the Russian language is traced in detail and in detail; at each historical stage, the peculiarities of the formation and changes in word formation and word usage of the official business style - the style of business correspondence as one of the most important genres of modern document flow - are noted.

1. HISTORY OF FORMATION OF THE BUSINESS STYLE OF THE RUSSIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE
1.1 X-XII centuries
The first business documents appeared in Rus' after the introduction in the 10th century. writing. The chronicle records the first written texts of agreements between the Russians and the Greeks, dating back to 907-971. In the 11th century The first set of laws of Kievan Rus, “Russian Truth”, appears - the main legal monument of Kievan Rus, by which one can judge the development of legal and socio-political terminology at that time.
The emergence of the oldest written set of laws is usually attributed to the reign of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who in 1016, wanting to reconcile with the Novgorodians, who were unfairly offended by the princely squad, consisting of hired Varangians, left his letter assuring that he would rule in accordance with his will " best husbands" of Novgorod. This is the traditional explanation of how the first part of the monument appeared - “The Truth of Yaroslav”.
Subsequently, the code was supplemented by articles introduced in the second half of the 11th century, the so-called Yaroslavich Pravda, compiled at a meeting of princes Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod with the boyars close to them around 1070. And finally, in the first decades of the 12th century. The lengthy edition of Russkaya Pravda included articles from the Charter of Vladimir Monomakh. Thus, the written recording of legislation designed to justify and protect the feudal system in the Kiev state took a long time, naturally reflecting slightly different stages of linguistic development 1 .
The language of "Russkaya Pravda" already contains characteristic features of a business style: the use of specific terms (vira - fine, listen - witness, mined – property, etc.), the presence of complex sentences and non-union chains.
The oldest document is also the “Certificate of Grand Duke Mstislav Volodimirovich and his son Vsevolod of 1130.” The initial formula of this letter “Se az” (“Here I am”) became from that time on a mandatory element of ancient Russian letters. The certificates end with a special construction, which indicates who witnessed the transaction and who seals the letter with his signature.
Let's consider the language of private correspondence from the time of Kievan Rus, the language of Novgorod letters on birch bark. Birch bark letters are among the oldest monuments of Russian writing; according to archaeological data, they date back to the 11th century. Some letters begin with the words: “order from NN to NN.” A frequently encountered stencil beginning of a letter can be considered the formula: “Commitment from NN to NN.” No less typical examples of the use of “literary etiquette” are found in the endings of letters. Phrases with various verb forms are typical at the end of letters bow, for example: “we bow to you”; “and I bow to you”; “I bow to you.” Also in the letters there is a bright and laconic ending: “and that’s all for you.” This indicates a generally high cultural level inhabitants of ancient Novgorod in the 11th-12th centuries. and at the same time confirms the inextricable connection of the language of ancient Russian business writing with book speech.
The given examples prove that such established phrases, traditional formulas for the beginning and ending of a letter belong already in the most ancient era to the literary epistolary style that arose in Rus', characterize the speech culture of the writers, their ability to master the processed forms of the long-established literary and written language. 2

1.2 XIV-XVI centuries
A new stage in the development of the Russian national and literary-written language begins in the second half of the 14th century. and is associated with the formation of a centralized state around Moscow - the Moscow Principality.
Local offices are named orders, and scribes of the grand ducal and local offices are called clerk, clerk. Affairs in these institutions were carried out by order clerks, who developed a special “order syllable”, close to colloquial speech common people, but also contained in its composition certain traditional formulas and phrases.
An integral part of the order syllable has become such words and expressions as petition, beat(to ask for something). It has become generally accepted that the petitioner, at the beginning of the petition, list all the numerous titles and titles of the high-ranking person to whom he addressed the request, and be sure to name full name and the patronymic of this person. On the contrary, the petitioner had to invariably write about himself only in a derogatory form, without adding a patronymic to his name and adding to it such designations of real or imaginary dependence as slave, slave, serf. 3
At the specified historical period the word is gaining particular currency diploma meaning business paper, document. Complex terms appear in which the noun is defined by adjectives: spiritual literacy(will), negotiable letter, folding letter, assigned letter, allotment letter(which established the boundaries of land grants), etc. Not limited to the genre of letters, business writing develops such forms as judicial records and interrogatory records.
By the XV-XVI centuries. refers to the compilation of new sets of judicial decisions, for example, the Code of Laws of Ivan III (1497), the Pskov Judicial Charter (1462-1476), in which, based on the articles of Russian Pravda, the further development of legal norms was recorded. Terms reflecting new social relations appear in business writing (younger brother, older brother, boyar children), new monetary relations that developed during the Moscow period (bondage, money etc.). 4 The development of abundant social terminology, brought to life by the complication of socio-economic relations, is associated with the direct impact of the folk-colloquial speech element on the literary and written language.
Language of business monuments of the XV-XVII centuries. - despite the relatively close proximity of the language of monuments of this type to colloquial speech, even such of them as interrogative speeches experienced the continuous and powerful influence of the written orthographic tradition, dating back to the Old Slavic writing of the 10th-11th centuries. Not a single written source of Ancient Rus' in all periods of historical development could be free from such traditional influence.
The enrichment and increase in the number of forms of business writing indirectly influenced all genres writing and, ultimately, contributed to the general progressive development of the literary and written language of Moscow Rus'. This language became more and more imbued with the speech features of business writing.
Since the 15th century information about who wrote the text becomes the norm, and from the 17th–18th centuries. – a mandatory requisite for a business letter. State command language of the 15th–17th centuries. for all its lexical diversity, it is a more standardized, standard language than living spoken language. He introduces into use a number of command formulas that become clichés and clericalisms (to take on bail, this is given in that, to give a confrontation, to put on trial, to inflict reprisals, etc.). There were more and more documents. The extensive office work of pre-Petrine Rus' required the development of unified approaches to the preparation and processing of documents. The process of unifying the language of documents, which began in Kievan Rus, received further development.
Thus, in the period from the 15th to the 17th centuries, during the era of the formation of the Russian centralized state, a state system was formed with an extensive system of functions served through various groups of documents. At this time, a special administrative institution was born - orders, and in their composition there were institutions serving written business communication - the office, mail, archive (which determined the era of order paperwork). The activities of these tools had to be based on a certain system of working with documents, and this need necessitated the development of normative and methodological acts containing recommendations for the preparation of documents, including those of a linguistic nature. In this way, a system of working with documents and a system of rules for their preparation begins to form.

1.3 Beginning of the 18th century - “Petrine era”
The Petrine era in the history of Russia is characterized by significant reforms and transformations that affected statehood, production, military and maritime affairs, and the life of the ruling classes of the then Russian society. Thus, the new administrative structure, the transformation of the Moscow state into Russian Empire, brought to life the names of many new ranks and titles included in the “Table of Ranks”, speech features of bureaucratic subordination: formulas for addressing lower ranks to higher ones.
The development of military, and especially naval affairs, which was almost absent in Muscovite Rus', gave rise to many relevant manuals and instructions, military and naval regulations, saturated with new special terminology, new special expressions, which completely replaced the words and expressions associated with the ancient Moscow military way of life . Along with this, to meet the needs of the increasingly Europeanized nobility, various guidelines were created that regulated the everyday life of the higher social classes.
In connection with the restructuring of public administration, with the development of industry and trade, the language of business correspondence is becoming significantly more complex and enriched. He is moving further and further away from old Moscow norms and traditions and is noticeably moving closer to living colloquial speech middle strata of the population.
Peter I, recommending that when translating from foreign languages ​​to refrain from book Slavic sayings, advised translators to take the language of the ambassadorial order as a model: “There is no need to put in lofty Slavic words; use the words of the ambassadorial order.” 5
The renewal of the vocabulary of the Russian literary language in the Petrine era was especially clearly manifested in the sphere of administrative vocabulary. It is replenished at this time mainly with borrowings from German, Latin, partly French. About a quarter of all borrowings of the Petrine era fall specifically on “words of the administrative language”, displacing the use of the corresponding Old Russian names. An administrator, an actuary, an auditor, an accountant, a king of arms, a governor, an inspector, a chamberlain, a chancellor, a landgewing, a minister, a police chief, a president, a prefect, a ratman, etc. appear. All these persons in their ampt, archive, hofgericht, province, chancellery, collegium, commission, office, town hall, senate, synod and other administrative institutions that have replaced recent thoughts and orders, address, accredit, test, arrest, run, confiscate, correspond, claim, second, interpret, exorcize, fine, etc. incognito, in envelopes, packages, various acts, accidents, amnesties, appeals, leases, bills, bonds, orders, projects, reports, tariffs, etc. 6 This administrative vocabulary includes names of persons according to their ranks and positions, names of institutions, names of various types of business documents.
And in the “General Regulations” of Peter’s Collegiums, a complete system of documentation standards was given. "General forms", i.e. document forms provided for design standards, etiquette standards for addressing the addressee indicating rank, title, rank, uniform standards for naming and self-designation. For violation of documentation rules, for incorrect drafting of documents, distortion of their meaning, punishment was provided for both “higher and lower ranks”; a mandatory reference to legislation was introduced when reporting on cases.
In the language of business writing of the Petrine era, old, traditional, and new elements coexisted and competed. The first include Church Slavonic words and forms, as well as expressions from the Old Moscow language of orders; to the second - foreign language borrowings (barbarisms), vernacular, features of dialect word usage, pronunciation and formation. The vocabulary of business language is increasingly moving away from colloquial, live speech; a huge number of foreign words penetrate into it.
During the administrative reform of Peter 1, the central management system was restructured (orders were replaced by collegiums), which marked the beginning of the era of collegial office work (1720-1802). During this period, a strict document management system continued to be improved, which meant the streamlining of business writing acts and the further officialization of the language. The normalization of documentary texts came from the government and found expression in numerous legislative acts, primarily in the “General Regulations of Collegiums” (1720) - a set of rules containing an integral system of documentation standards, which served as an impetus for the emergence of modern forms of documents. During the reform, the structure and form of traditional documents were improved and samples of new documents were developed, placed in “general forms” - all this led to the unification of documents and the gradual elimination of the personal element in the practice of writing them. Also, the new rules introduced new etiquette standards for addressing the addressee indicating rank, title, rank.

1.4 The end of the 18th century - “The Golden Age of Catherine II”

Business documents appeared in Rus' after the introduction in the 10th century. writing. The first written documents recorded in the chronicle are the texts of treaties between the Russians and the Greeks in 907, 911, 944 and 971. In the 11th century The first set of laws of Kievan Rus, “Russian Truth”, appears - an original monument of writing, which makes it possible to judge the development of the system of legal and socio-political terminology at that time. In the language of “Russkaya Pravda” it is already possible to highlight the peculiarities of word usage and organization of speech, which belong to the characteristic features of business style. This is high terminology, the predominance of composition over subordination in complex sentences, the presence of complex constructions with coordinating conjunctions “and”, “yes”, “the same”, as well as non-union chains. Of all types of complex sentences, the most widely used constructions are those with a conditional clause.

In “Russian Truth”, terms are already used that indicate the development of legal relations in Ancient Rus': head (killed), golovnik (killer), poslukh (witness), vira (fine), extracted (property), veno vopikoe (bride price ), kuna (money). Legal terms represent the most important lexical layer of the language of ancient documents.

After “Russkaya Pravda,” the oldest document is considered to be “The Charter of Grand Duke Mstislav Volodimirovich and his son Vsevolod of 1130.” The initial formula of this letter “Se az”... (“Here I am”) becomes from now on an obligatory element (requisite) of ancient Russian letters.

The letters ended with a special formula, which indicated who witnessed the transaction and who signed the letter.

The “General Regulations” of Peter’s Collegiums provided a complete system of documentation standards. “General forms”, i.e. document forms provided for design standards, etiquette standards for addressing the addressee indicating rank, title, rank, uniform standards for naming and self-designation. The vocabulary of business language is increasingly moving away from colloquial, living speech; a huge number of foreign words (province, act, run, appeal, etc.) and terms penetrate into it.

In the 19th century, when the formation of a codified literary language was largely completed, its functional varieties - styles - began to actively form. Documents of official correspondence were obtained in the 19th century. the widest distribution and in quantitative terms significantly surpassed other types of business texts. They were written on official letterhead and included a certain set of details.

Since 1811, after the adoption of the “General Establishment of Ministries”, the characteristic features of the clerical style were actively formed: formal-logical organization of the text, impersonal nature of the statement, syntactic cumbersomeness, nominal character of speech, morphological and lexical uniformity (prevalence of the nominative and genitive cases), standardization . As a result of the reform of office work (rules for the preparation of documentation), the need arose to reform the clerical style, which began to be conceptualized as a task of national importance.

In the 20th century the unification of documents becomes irreversible. New rules for maintaining official documentation were developed: in 1918, a unified form of business letter forms was introduced. In the 20s XX century Work began on creating new standards for business writing, and stencil texts appeared.