DIALECTAL LEXIS IN EXPLANATORY DICTIONARIES AND ITS FUNCTIONING IN MODERN LANGUAGE

The author analyzes the principles of description of dialectal lexis in explanatory dictionaries of the Russian literary language of large and medium type of the second half of the 20th — early 21st centuries and considers the functioning of words marked in dictionaries with the label “regional” in modern sources of various types and genres — literary fiction, opinion journalism, letters, diaries and memoirs, non-fi ction popular science and specialised texts. The author concludes that dictionaries react to changes in the status of dialectal lexis, noting its obsolescence or transition into the literary language: instead of the “regional” label, “colloquial”, “agricultural”, “historic”, “obsolete”, as well as their combinations, remarks in interpretations and peculiarities of interpretations of lexical meanings of words are used. The author has revealed a regularity: some of the words marked with the “regional” label are either not used at all in modern texts or are used to stylize the speech of the past. Another part of the marked words, on the contrary, actively functions in literature, which testifi es to the transition of such vocabulary to the lower strata of colloquial speech or to special spheres. All the above-mentioned points to the genetic character of the “regional” label and the necessity of its revision in dictionaries of the modern literary language.