1st Edition
The Soft Power of the Russian Language Pluricentricity, Politics and Policies
Exploring Russian as a pluricentric language, this book provides a panoramic view of its use within and outside the nation and discusses the connections between language, politics, ideologies, and cultural contacts.
Russian is widely used across the former Soviet republics and in the diaspora, but speakers outside Russia deviate from the metropolis in their use of the language and their attitudes towards it. Using country case studies from across the former Soviet Union and beyond, the contributors analyze the unifying role of the Russian language for developing transnational connections and show its value in the knowledge economy. They demonstrate that centrifugal developments of Russian and its pluricentricity are grounded in the language and education policies of their host countries, as well as the goals and functions of cultural institutions, such as schools, media, travel agencies, and others created by émigrés for their co-ethnics. This book also reveals the tensions between Russia’s attempts to homogenize the 'Russian world' and the divergence of regional versions of Russian reflecting cultural hybridity of the diaspora.
Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book will prove useful to researchers of Russian and post-Soviet politics, Russian studies, Russian language and culture, linguistics, and immigration studies. Those studying multilingualism and heritage language teaching may also find it interesting.
Part 1. Russian as a communicative tool: Lingua franca, intermediator or something else?
Chapter 1 The Russian Language away from Metropolis: Challenges of Pluricentric Development
Arto Mustajoki, Ekaterina Protassova, Maria Yelenevskaya
Chapter 2 The History of the Internationalization of Russian
Vladimir M. Alpatov
Chapter 3 The Democratization of Russian
Arto Mustajoki
Part 2. The Russian-Language Legacy
Chapter 4 Language Policy in Relation to the Russian Language in Georgia before and after Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Kakha Gabunia, Ketevan Gochitashvili
Chapter 5 Russian in Armenia: Between Thriving and Surviving
Suren T. Zolyan, Karen S. Hakobyan
Chapter 6 Russian in Azerbaijan: Changing Practices and Emerging Paradigms
Jala Garibova
Chapter 7 Variability in the Russian Diaspora Speech of Estonia
Jelisaveta Kostandi, Irina Külmoja, Oksana Palikova
Chapter 8 The Russian Language in Latvia—The Historic Linguistic Situation
Pavels Jurs, Alida Samusevica
Chapter 9 The Russian Language of the Lithuanian Republic as Reflected in Mass Media Discourse
Birute Sinochkina
Chapter 10 The Russian Language in Belarus and Ukraine
Jan Patrick Zeller, Dmitri Sitchinava
Chapter 11 The Russian Language in Kazakhstan in the 21st Century
Damina Shaibakova
Chapter 12 Russian Language in Kyrgyzstan: Status, Functioning and Collisions between Languages
Mamed D. Tagaev, Ekaterina Protassova
Part 3. The Russian-Speaking Diaspora
Chapter 13 The Russian Language in France: from the Russian Community to the National Education System
Irina Kor Chahine
Chapter 14 Russian in Germany
Katharina Hamann, Kai Witzlack-Makarevich, Nadja Wulff
Chapter 15 Russian and its Speakers in Finland
Johanna Viimaranta
Chapter 16 The Russian Language in Canada
Veronika Makarova
Chapter 17 The Russian Dialects Outside Russia: The Situation in South America
Olga Rovnova
Chapter 18 Connected by Digital Imagination: Discourses of Belonging and Community Building of Russophone Migrants in the USA and Great Britain
Oksana Morgunova (Petrunko), Renat T. Zinnurov
Part 4. New Trends in the Functioning of the Russian Language
Chapter 19 Heritage Russian in the US and the New Type of Pluricentricity in the Context of Immigration
Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan
Chapter 20 Family Language Policy, Russian Language Use, Maintenance and Transmission in Cyprus and Sweden
Natalia Ringblom, Sviatlana Karpava
Chapter 21 Russian As A Foreign Language Education in Japanese High Schools:A Multilingual Education Policy on the Margin
Sachiko Yokoi Horii
Biography
Arto Mustajoki is Professor Emeritus at Helsinki University, Finland.
Ekaterina Protassova is Adjunct Professor in Russian language at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Maria Yelenevskaya is Senior Teaching Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.