MYTHOPOETICS AND PRAGMATICS OF THE SOVIET ANECDOTE

Abstract

The article focuses on the mythopoetics and pragmatics of the Soviet anecdote as a speech genre as well as a genre of urban folklore, its definition, genre modus and sociocultural specificity. A case study of “the folklore of intelligentsia” (Yu. Boriev) has been conducted. Much attention is given to the typological convergence of the phenomena of a myth and an anecdote. In the article the myth and the anecdote are revealed as a repository of historical and cultural memory, a product of mass consciousness, which is manifested in the anonymity, myth-creative potential, compensatory function. The hero of the anecdote is the ambivalent figure of the trickster, which goes back to the traditional myth. The emphasis is drawn to the metatextuality inherent in “the folklore of intelligentsia”. The Soviet anecdote poetics performs pragmatic function of the ideological mythdeconstruction.