Functions of Foreign Language Inclusions in the Language Composition of Zakhar Prilepin’s Novel “Tuma”
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-6-65-73
This study aims to develop a functional typology of foreign language inclusions as specific linguistic units in Zakhar Prilepin’s novel “Tuma” (2025) and to determine their systemic role in the organization of a multilingual literary text. The material consists of fragments in Turkish, Crimean Tatar, Polish, Serbian, Greek, Moldavian, Romani, Armenian, and Arabic, extracted by continuous sampling (more than 200 contexts). The article argues that foreign language inclusions in this work are not a stylistic exoticism but a system-forming element of the language composition, implementing a strategy of multilingual discourse modeling. Seven functions are identified and described in detail: characterological (marking the protagonist as a polyglot linguistic personality); nominative (creating linguocultural colour through exoticisms); plot-forming (language as a tool of survival, deception, and loyalty test); cultural-identificational (marking religious and ethnic belonging); psychological (verbalizing borderline states such as fear and pain); rhythmic-compositional (organizing the narrative pulse through alternation of codes); polyphonic (producing sonic chaos in crowd scenes). The paper reveals for the first time a correlation between the frequency of Turkic languages (about 40 %) and the dominant role of the protagonist’s mother tongue in psychologically intense scenes. It is established that the author’s refusal of simultaneous translation of foreign language remarks in crowd scenes creates an effect of “acoustic shock” that enhances the traumatic perception. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time, using the material of the novel “Tuma”, a functional typology of foreign language inclusions is proposed that takes into account not only their nominative but also their plotforming and identificational role, thereby expanding theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of language contact in contemporary Russian prose. The obtained results indicate that multilingualism in Prilepin’s text becomes a means of constructing a borderline identity (“tuma”) and reproducing the linguistic situation of the Azov-Don frontier of the 17th century. Special attention is paid to code-switching as a tool for character portrayal and to the creation of the defamiliarization effect through the refusal of simultaneous translation. The proposed functional typology can be extrapolated to other multilingual texts of 21st-century Russian prose. Thus, foreign language inclusions serve as a key compositional device.
Keywords: foreign language inclusions, language composition, multilingual literary text, functional typology, language contacts, code-switching, Russian as a literary language
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Issue: 6, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Pages: 65 — 73
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