Paper long abstract:

In my paper I look at life stories of members of Estonian-Russophone, Latvian-Russophone and Lithuanian-Russophone mixed families, their cultural and historical memory, and personal experiences of living/visiting the USSR and Russia. My methodological approach focuses on culturally shared knowledge, practices and symbols, and different forms of their representation using discourse analysis, content analysis and qualitative sociology methods.

In 2016-2017 I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 36 Estonian-Russophone mixed couples from sociolinguistically diverse Estonian regions. In Latvia, I interviewed 30 Latvian-Russophone couples from the Latgale region and Riga. In Lithuania, I interviewed 25 Lithuanian-Russophone couples from Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda.

My comparative paper draws parallels between the perceptions of Russophone people based on their historical memory, identity trajectories and personal experiences. There were five discourses found: First group talked about limited accurate information about (life in) Russia and showed concerns about making (Russia's) Russians a laughing stock in the Baltic countries. Second group claimed the main reason for the Russia's negative country image in the Baltics seems to be the result of bad and unfair Western media coverage, which tends to broadcast Russia in the negative context only. For the third group, Russia was a dreamland and the option to migrate to Russia permanently was not precluded in the perspective. Forth group was appreciative of their Russian linguistic background, often talking about Russian as a commodity. Finally, fifth group showed a sense of proudness when discussing the cultural heritage, also when referring to the Russians as a nation or as we-group.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the process of Russian lexical borrowings into the language of the Teleuts - a small-numbered indigenous Turkic-speaking community in Southern Siberia. This process began in the 17th century and encompassed a strictly outlined number of semantic fields which reflected the areas where Russian colonists interacted with South Siberian nomads. This lead to the enrichment of Teleut with Russian loanwords denoting new material culture items or social relations like qalotqo 'beehive' or qorot 'town'. About 0,8% (30 out of 3800) of all lexical entries attested in the Russian-Teleut dictionary have Russian origin being in most cases phonetically and morpho-phonologically adapted to the Teleut language system. However in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras the process of Russian lexical borrowings became invasive which lead to introduction of many hundreds of new lexical items which Teleut did not (and still does not) seem to be able to adapt, neither semantically nor morpho-phonologically. I hereby assume that rapid shrinkage of communicative scope of Teleut accompanied with massive Russian lexical infiltration leads to the erosion of the language, which has been proved during my linguistic fieldtrips.

Since all those speakers who still have full command of Teleut are bilingual it is somewhat difficult to tell between borrowings on the one hand and code-mixing, code-switching and insertions on the other when they occasionally use Russian words. If those words of Russian origin are not attested in the dictionaries and are not traditionally used long enough to be regarded as semantically adapted borrowings, does it mean we witness the Teleut-Russian code-mixing or borrowing of a new lexical item into Teleut? I admit there are many factors to be considered here including not only linguistic but social as well, such as situational pragmatics and interlocutors' attitudes.

The basis of this research are various lexicographic editions of Teleut issued between 1866 and 2008 (mainly dictionaries) as well as linguistic material from fieldtrips which were made possible due to Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP) supported by SOAS ELDP foundation in 2016-2019.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a contribution to the exploration of social change in Kyrgyzstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union and analysis of current business environment in the context of globalization. The concepts of globalization impact on culture, cultural identity, business culture, and intercultural business communication were utilized as a theoretical framework for this study. The mixed-method approach guided the data collection process. Primary qualitative data included observations and interviews that were conducted in Bishkek and three smaller towns in Issyk-Kul region. The researcher utilized the role of an Observer-Participant while visiting local businesses, public places and events, and several homes of local residents. Twelve individual interviews were conducted and analyzed to explore Kyrgyz people perceptions regarding global diversity of businesses, religions, and cultural identity. Quantitative data were collected from 34 pencil-and-paper cultural Value Survey Module (VSM) 2013 developed by Dr. Geert Hofstede. These surveys were analyzed on the six cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede. The researcher suggests that along with homogenization and westernization of certain aspects of Kyrgyz culture, the impact of globalization can be seen in the increase of self-consciousness and cultural identities. Both adoption of new values and their rejection were observed in the social and business settings. Kyrgyz people are open to foreign businesses; however, they are concerned and suspicious toward the goals of the foreigners of visiting and/or running their businesses in Kyrgyzstan. There is a growing conflict between traditional Kyrgyz Muslims and the Islamic influence from the Arabic world and the increase of gender traditional roles expectations. This study requires more both qualitative and quantitative data to triangulate the information and gain the power analysis.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on regionalization and globalization along the Silk Road from northwest China's Hexi corridor through Central Asia, in the context of China's "One Belt One Road" Strategic initiative. Much attention has been given in the literature to economic and policy-related aspects of globalization in Central Eurasia, but little attention has been paid to microlevel questions of how such changes spread. The paper examines the little researched phenomenon of societal multilingualism, personal plurilingualism in this region and arguing that the development of mobile multilingual sociolinguistic networks play an necessary role in the mediation of change and exchange in the region.

This paper supplements globalization literature by questioning to what extent discourses "travel" in a vacuum, that is, are appropriated wholesale, or in the process of travelling are resisted, or appropriated for local purposes, or transformed, even distorted, in implementation (Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004; Silova, 2005), and by focusing on the role of societal multilingualism and personal plurilingualism as key elements mediating the interchanges between individuals and groups by which globalization does or does not occur, is resisted, or transformed. This emphasis on language is drawn from Charles Taylor's arguments for the validity of transcendental arguments (Taylor, 1995, pp. 20-33), where inquiry focuses on the examination of the necessary conditions for some phenomenon that is taken as given, or what Bourdieu has referred to as "the conditions of possibility" of a phenomenon (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 18). In this paper it is assumed that processes of global change are taking place, but that these processes themselves depend on interchange among peoples and across borders, which itself requires knowledge of the language(s) of others. The paper draws on statistical data on language, education and migration to demonstrate the degree of inbound and outbound mobility and the scale and scope of plurilingualism within the region. The paper also reviews the historical role and contemporary role of multilingual trading networks, in mediating change and exchange. The paper concludes that regionalization and globalization processes in Central Eurasia are indeed dependent on the previous broad and increasingly large-scale multilingualism and plurilingualism, that Central Asia's experience is not at all at the margins of globalization, but at its centre.