Dostoevsky question.

[tpolowy at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU]

Hello Everyone!

I am posting this query for a colleague who is teaching a course in semiotics:

"We are reading Voloshinov's "Toward a Marxist philosophy of language" in my
semiotics course and he cites a passage from Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer in
which Dostoevsky talks about a group of drunks whose conversation consists
entirely of one obscene word repeated with different intonations and therefore
different meanings. Does anyone happen to know what particular obscene word
this was? Or has it remained "unprintable"?"

If you know or have any ideas as to what this word might be,please reply
off-list to me at tpolowy at email.arizona.edu

Thank you!

Teresa Polowy, Head
Russian and Slavic Studies
University of Arizona

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