On ‘scumbags' and ‘cyberpatrols': Virtual sources of language contamination

Abstract

Anyone who has been paying close attention to Russian politics over the past years can attest to the heightened attention devoted to public language and the internet as sources of verbal, cultural, and political contamination. According to one policy watch group, in just the past six months, some 20 different pieces of draft legislation have been introduced to restrict, control, monitor, or otherwise regulate the Russian-language internet (Runet). This article examines how and why commonly held attitudes toward language help shape the perception of degradation, pollution, anarchy and all-permissiveness, beginning with the phenomenon of “scumbag language” (iazyk padonkov) and extending to Putin's recently embraced civilizational discourse. This perception, in turn, has made Russian internet culture vulnerable to symbolic associations with all sorts of taboo or otherwise socially unacceptable behavior (ranging from cursing to treason, with slander, blasphemy, extremism, and pedophilia somewhere along that spectrum) and has thus provided rhetorical justifcation for regulating, reigning in, repatriating, and ultimately censoring Runet-based civil discourse.