The Russian Language Outside the Nation

ISBN-13: 9780748668458 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 304 str.

Lara Ryazanova-Clarke

Opis

The collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically changed the global distribution of the Russian language. Apart from Russia, it is now spoken in fourteen successor states of the former Soviet Union, while the increased mobility of Russian speakers has expanded russophone communities across the world.
Taking a broad sociolinguistic perspective, this book explores a comprehensive set of tensions which emerged from the dislocated and deterritorialised position of Russian in the contemporary world. It examines contexts for shaping Russian speakers' identities in various locations across the globe, the shifting attitudes towards Russian language outside the metropolis, emerging new global varieties of Russian, and the use of Russian language as soft power in the transnational russophone media. In order to discuss problems posed by the current stage of globalisation of Russian, a number of non-metropolitan spaces are sampled: chapters take the reader to locations which include both the post-Soviet states, specifically Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus, and the countries of the traditional 'West' - Italy, the US and Israel.
A thought-provoking and engaging book, it is essential reading for advanced students and specialists in Russian and Eastern European Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Language Studies and Sociolinguistics

Spis treści

Introduction: the Russian language, challenged by globalisation, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke; Part I: Russian and its legal status; The legal status of Russian and Russian speakers in the near abroad, Michael Newcity; The Russian language in Ukraine: complicit in genocide, or victim of state-building?, Bill Bowring; Part II: Linguistic perceptions and symbolic values; The Russian language in Belarus: language use, speaker identities and metalinguistic discourse, Curt Woolhiser; What is Russian in Ukraine? Popular beliefs regarding the social roles of the language, Volodymyr Kulyk; Part III: Russian speaking communities and identity negotiations; Post-Soviet Russian-speaking diaspora in Italy: results of an empirical sociolinguistic survey, Monica Perotto; Ethnolinguistic vitality and acculturation orientations of Russian-speakers in Estonia, Martin Ehala and Anastassia Zabrodskaja; Linguistic performance of ‘Russianness’ among Russian-Israeli parents: discourse analysis of child-raising practices in immigrant community, Claudia Zbenovich; Part IV: Language contact and globalisation of Russian; Similarities and differences between American-immigrant Russian of the 1970s and ‘80s and post-Soviet Russian in the Motherland, David Andrews; Predictors of pluricentricity: lexical divergences between Latvian Russian and Russian Russian, Alexandr Berdichevskis; Part V: Globalisation of Russian as soft power; Russian with an accent: globalisation and post-Soviet imaginary, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke; Index