A01=Simon Franklin
Author_Simon Franklin
Category=CFF
Category=NHTB
communism
educated elite
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
language culture
language of the people
linguistics
obscenity
online identity
Orthodox religion
Russia
Russian culture
Russian language
Russian literature
slang
Product details
- ISBN 9781836392668
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Language can be a battleground of ideas, and nowhere is this more vivid than in the Russian context. Across 350 years, Russian has been shaped by competing visions of what it should be, from early grammarians defining a literary standard to digital-era debates about slang, obscenity and online identity. Simon Franklin traces how tradition and disruption have continually reshaped the language, including sections on the discovery by the educated elite of the language of ‘the people’, the linguistic experiments of writers and revolutionaries, the rhetoric of empire and politics. Clear, concise and engaging, Troublesome Words is both a history and a cultural portrait, examining the global diversity of Russian today and revealing how language reflects power, imagination and the changing world.
Simon Franklin is Emeritus Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Russian Graphosphere, 1450–1850 (2019) and co-editor of The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature (2024).
