Paper long abstract:

It is becoming increasingly common for individuals from particularly different linguistic backgrounds to live in a single mixed community, and London, in this case, is no exception. It can be seen that there are societies that consist of multiple ethnic groups, people, there can easily meet with people of different nationalities who speak in various languages. In this multilingual society, the role of language is crucial, and it is necessary to people to maintain their native language in order to prevent the language shift.

The significance of this study lies in the fact that the preservation of the native language helps to appreciate the native culture and heritage, which contributes to the formation of positive self-esteem. When the native language is not maintained, important links to family and other community members may be lost. By encouraging native language use, parents can prepare the child to interact with the native language community.

To identify the language use and language behaviour of one certain ethnic group in multilingual environment, Giles et al. (1977) propose an idea to multilingualism that calls the Ethnolinguistic Vitality approach where the focus was how people of the certain linguistic community use language within host country's community.

Relying Giles et al. (1977) approach, the main aim of this paper is to identify social and linguistic background and language use with various interlocutors of bilingual speakers of one ethnic minority in London in order to find out how bilingual people tend to maintain their language in multilingual environment. As ethnic minority there, Kazakh bilingual people in London were taken. They come from bilingual society. Kazakhstan is considered as one of the five post-Soviet Central Asian countries. According to Dave (2003), the linguistic situation of Kazakhstan was the most Russian influenced case of all the Central Asian countries. He states that in many parts of Kazakhstan, especially in the north, Russian is still the dominant language. In addition, to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan Russian is the official language, therefore as Dave (2003) considers every individual in this country can be bilingual. The structure of this paper will include the literature review, which deals with research on Ethnolinguistic Vitality approach to multilingualism. In addition, it will also discuss the methodology that has been used, in particular, data collection, the design of the questionnaire and its participants. Finally, it will analyse and discuss the received data.