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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Speech technology as an experimental science: towards the comparative dynamics of Sprechkunde in Germany and Russia in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century

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description

The article examines various resonances of the “speech technology” (Sprechkunde) current in German and Russian-Soviet context of 1900–1920s. It contains first of all a brief history of the techniques of speech in Germany, an inquiry into some psychophysical sources of the “speech technology” and a survey of the contribution of German “new rhetoric” to this movement. The Russian counterparts of this trend include the Institute of the Living Word (Institut živogo slova, 1918–1923), some Russian formalists, the scenic speech specialists and the theatre pedagogues. The conclusion summarises the historical significance of “speech technology” and its common features in Germany and Russia. It turns out that in both countries this movement was a compromise between a radically empirical program and a neo-romanticism of the so- called “idealist linguistics” (K. Vossler’s School).