Social dialectology: modern state and problems

The article exemplifies the authors' views on the state of affairs in modern Russian social dialectology as a new branch of sociolinguistics, and demonstrates application of expansionism, anthropocentrism, functionalism and explanatoriness as the main principles of the new linguistic paradigm in sociolinguistic research. The paper offers analysis of the advantages of the integrated approach applied in the studies of social dialects of both - high and low - registers of communication. The authors prove that social dialectology possesses its own theoretical foundation and methodological framework, its research methods are described and time-tested, the existing reviews of social dialectological lexicography are full and complete. The intensive growth of social dialectology is viewed by the authors as catalyzed by the change of the linguistic paradigm and caused by utilizing argot, jargons and non-codified forms of professional sublanguages as sociolinguistic research database. The focus of modern Russian social dialectological schools pioneering the research in the area is on the following: institutional communicative practices based on extra-linguistic contexts, institutional discourse analysis, professional societies as discourse-forming community, interpretation of internal determinants of professional communication. Modern functional (anthropocentric) paradigm views professional/social communication not only as the process of sending and receiving information conducted by communication partners but a complicated web of discursive practices of professionals (and at discourses junctures those of professionals with laymen), generating common senses and meanings. The suggested taxonomy of social dialects, based on the parameters of openness/closeness of the community and codified/non-codified type of the language used by it, include the following forms of the language: professional sublanguages, codes (ciphers) of security services, jargons and argot.