Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Russian officials and politicians will face fines for mispronouncing words or using coarse language in interviews under a new law being drafted by the mass communications ministry.
"It is unacceptable... that officials freely use indecent language when speaking on the air. We have to fight against that," Tatyana Petrova, a member of a government Russian Language commission, told the Trud daily.
Officials and politicians are currently not subject to penalties or prosecution for pronunciation mistakes or obscenities as no dictionary has been approved as a source of pronunciation standards, and the notion of "indecent words" has not been set out in legislation, the paper said, citing experts.
The commission has selected four dictionaries to help define official language standards, the paper said. They have been approved by the Russian Academy of Sciences and are expected to be included in a list of dictionaries recommended by the state as reflecting Russian language norms.
Only the use of swearwords, or mat, in public is classified in Russian law as hooliganism, and fines of up to 1,000 rubles ($30) or a short custodial sentence can be imposed on offenders. But the law is rarely enforced.
Swearwords have been uttered on national television on few occasions during live broadcasts, but "milder" abusive words by outspoken politicians have become increasingly common, as have mispronunciations.
