AHEAD OF THE WORD: REVIEW OF THE MONOGRAPH ‘WORD AND THOUGHT: ONE STEP AHEAD’ BY V. K. KHARCHENKO (MOSCOW, INFRA-M PUBL, 2024, 219 P.)

The author reviews a new monograph by V. K. Kharchenko, Professor of Belgorod State National Research University. The monograph discusses the view of philological epistemology from the perspective of the first third of the 21st century. V. K. Kharchenko has a modern view of the scientific knowledge problems in philology and makes an attempt to outline the main ways of further development of the mentioned scientific field. The main task of the scholar-philologist of the new millennium is, first of all, to overcome many standardized approaches to language units, text, style. According to Kharchenko, constancy does not contribute to the scientific research productivity. For example, academic lexicography proves that the great polysemantics of a word, its ability to develop additional meanings determines the degree of its stability in the active lexicon of native speakers. Traditional paradigms of philology are currently receiving new development impulses due to the branching of the research line, greater attention to details and the active involvement of the individual creative vision of the scholar. V. К. Kharchenko assesses the riskiness of modern philological concepts, paying attention to the possibility of taking into account not only the proven facts, but also hypotheses from the sphere of scientific irrationality and creative intuition. Using rich illustrative material, the author examines those philological achievements of previous epochs that were initially considered materially impossible and even fantastic. The broad scientific erudition of V. K. Kharchenko allows her to convincingly operate with facts from linguistics (mainly lexicology, lexicography, paremiology), literary criticism (literary and journalistic texts by Russian authors of the 18th – 21st centuries), art history (history of painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.), psychology (various sensory phenomena, synesthesia, effects on consciousness), physiology (including the physiology of higher nervous activity, the brain), etc. V. K. Kharchenko also notes unique cases of the emergence of new thematic areas in philology and new objects of research (for example, the rhyme). The book presents various stylistic phenomena that the author identifies in modern philological research, outlines the connections between philology and ethics, and postulates the importance of linguistic positivity and a aiming for success.