This book is an effort to present a comprehensive sociolinguistic account of the variety of English that is used by the people in multicultural Russia, a vast country of the Expanding Circle of World Englishes. This volume includes the history of the Russian and English linguistic and cultural interrelations, the nature and the results of the contact between these languages and cultures, functions of Russian English, and the attitudes of the Russian people toward the linguistic globalization led by English. The specifics of the Russian linguistic and cultural traditions are predetermined by the country’s geopolitical situation. Located between Europe and Asia, Russia serves as a bridge connecting Europe and Asia while incorporating both Western and Eastern traditions – factors which are reflected in the languages used by its citizens. In this respect, Russian English, employed by Russians more and more often, is a language still restricted in its functions; however, its role has been rapidly increasing since the fall of the Iron Curtain. English is used for intercultural communication, spreading Russian culture and enriching the Russian people with knowledge of many other cultures, as well as a number of intranational functions. In recent years, English in Russia has assumed the roles which earlier were filled by Russian (for instance, in youth culture), or those that are new, such as in advertising and computing.
The Russian English variety, like any other variety of the Expanding Circle (China English, Japanese English, and many others), is a disputable phenomenon due to a number of reasons discussed in this book, but its existence is predetermined by it being a secondary form for the Russian people to express their culture and their mentality (the primary form being expressed by the indigenous languages, with Russian as a major language of the multilingual country).
A great number of world Englishes have been recently described. Most of these works cover new non-European Englishes, while our book is the first one to describe a European or, to be precise, Eurasian variety of the Expanding Circle. Russian English, with its multi-ethnic flavour, is a new field of study, and there has been no comprehensive book-length work on this topic until now. However, there is a growing international as well as domestic interest in the Russian variety of English, due to the increase in international contacts with Russia that “still stands behind a mental barrier” for many Westerners (Alapuro et al. Reference Alapuro, Mustajoki, Pesonen, Alapuro, Mustajoki and Pesonen2012: xiii), and the development of the role of English as a regional and international communication medium. In addition, while the fundamental principles and controversies of the World Englishes paradigm are still relatively unknown in Russia, there is a rapidly growing interest in linguistic identity among linguists and educators.
The team of authors comprises leading specialists in the field who have been working on these problems for quite a long time, are considered to be most authoritative, and are widely referred to in Russian scholarship. Since some authors live and work in Russia and some outside of the country, this book presents a broad sociolinguistic perspective from various angles, local and global.
The book consists of three parts, with Part I describing Russian English as a variety, Part II dealing with functions of English in various domains in Russia, and Part III covering the attitudinal aspect toward the variety.
Part I has four chapters. In Chapter 1, Anna Eddy and Zoya Proshina start with examining the history of Russian-English language and culture contacts from the sixteenth century to the post-perestroika period: the introduction of English to Russia in the sixteenth century, the influx of English during the reign of Peter I in the seventeenth century, the Anglomania of the eighteenth century, the use of English in pre-revolutionary Russia, English behind the Iron Curtain, and the influx of English during perestroika and one-and-a-half decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The discussion of the Russian-English language contact addresses lexical borrowings, morphology, changes in the structure of the Russian written discourse, ideology, the changed status of Russian, and pragmatics. In today’s Russia, English has asserted a definite presence in the Russian linguistic landscape, which is described in section 2 of Chapter 1 by Zoya Proshina. Categories of Russian-English language users within Russia and overseas (emigrants), and the impact of globalization on the Russian speech community are discussed in this section to lay a foundation for the further discussion of the use of English in Russia. The question of authentic Russian English versus translated English is also addressed. The discussion draws parallels with recent research on the worldwide use of English and contemporary theories of language contact.
Chapter 2 is written by Zoya Proshina. It discusses debated issues and lays the theoretical framework for the volume. Section 1 of this chapter compares the notions of variety and interlanguage to prove Russian English as a sociolinguistic phenomenon is characteristic of the entire speech community of both competent and less competent Russian speakers of English. As such it makes up a dynamic bilingual cline consisting of three functional zones: acrolect, mesolect, and basilect, referred to as Russia English, Russian English, or Ruslish/Runglish/Renglish. These varying lects differ functionally, stylistically, and situationally, though there is hardly a rigid borderline between them. Unlike the sociolinguistic notion of variety, interlanguage is an educational phenomenon, peculiar to the fossilized speech of individuals. The section also addresses distinctions between linguistic features of the variety, including innovations and deviations from other ‘norms,’ and typical mistakes, as well as the transition of the latter into the concept of deviations. The variety is, therefore, a social performance continuum that is formed from individual idioms typically and systematically produced by English speakers. The second section of the chapter argues that linguistic features of mesolectal Russian English, though not normative (with the exonorms based primarily on the British or American standard), reflect the trend of the variety development as a result of language contact. In fact, the opposition of language and speech or discourse is essential when talking about the norms of Russian English which is oriented toward the model of English as an International Language (EIL) implying the variability of exonorms, but in fact often results in mixture of standards intertwining with transferred features of the native language in the live discourse. Kachru’s concepts of functional range and depth of language usage (Kachru B. Reference Kachru and Smith1983) are fundamental for investigating an emerging variety of English. They are instrumental, regulative, interpersonal, creative, and intercultural functions. These functions are discussed in the third section and the use of Russian English is also examined along with the interdependence of its functions and domains of use.
Chapter 3 deals with the interaction of language and culture that make two facets of Russian English. Section 1, prepared by Zoya Proshina, provides for the comparison between Russian and English. It describes typological characteristics of Russian and English and their common features and distinctions on different language levels, which may have an impact on the features of Russian English. It is known that language contact between English and an indigenous language is usually a two-way process that leads to nativization of English and Englishization of the indigenous language. Englishization of Russian is elucidated by Alexandra Rivlina and Zoya Proshina in section 2. In section 3, Alexandra Rivlina elaborates on English and Russian code-mixing and code-switching. She argues that English-Russian hybridization is increasingly widely used in Russian discourse, especially in the form of word play based on code-mixing. Section 4, by Svetlana Ter-Minasova, focuses the discussion on the contemporary changes in Russian mentality and culture caused by the sudden ‘intrusion’ of English into the Russian language, culture, and lifestyle. The impact of English culture via the English language in its various forms (mass media, advertising, the avalanche of borrowing, etc.) on Russian culture can be seen in different domains: in the business domain, change of attitudes to patronymics; in academic papers, change of style, the great damage inflicted on the Russian linguacultural picture of the world by poor translations from English into Russian. Section 5, by Victor Kabakchi and Elena Beloglazova, characterizes the way English adjusts to expressing Russian culture-loaded concepts.
Chapter 4 describes linguistic features of Russian English on different levels of language structure. It consists of five sections. Section 1 (Victoria Zavyalova) is a presentation of the sound inventory (consonants and vowels in Russian English); syllable inventory; accentual and rhythmic organization of words, and intonation. This part is based on the Russian Asian Corpus of English (RACE) compiled at Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok). Section 2 (Zoya Proshina) particularizes orthographic and punctuation features of Russian English. The correlations between the Cyrillic and Roman letters and difference in Russian and English punctuation are made vivid. Grammatical features of Russian English are discussed in section 3 (Anna Ionina and Zoya Proshina), which focuses on syntactic features (inversions, adverbial attributes, link verbs, and parallel parts of the sentence) and morphological features (tenses, voice, gerund, noun plural, articles, and pronouns). The description is based on the corpus of academic Russian English collected on the basis of proceedings of a number of conferences in education and linguistics, with the material presented in articles by Russian teachers of English (of secondary and tertiary institutions), that is, mesolectal and acrolectal varieties of academic English. Lexical features are the most noticeable linguistic elements. The discussion in section 4 (Anna Eddy) focuses on borrowings and new coinages, shift of meaning, changes in collocations, proper names, and terms. Section 5 (Tatiana Ivankova) turns to pragmatic features of Russian English. Modality, masculine orientation, belittling oneself, and politeness are the focus of this section.
The nine chapters of Part II cover domains of English use in Russia: Chapter 5 (Tatiana Ivankova and Elena Salakhyan) – politics; Chapter 6 (Irina Krykova and Olesya Lazaretnaya) – business; Chapter 7 (Galina Lovtsevich) – education; Chapter 8 (Elena Lawrick) – scholarship; Chapter 9 – mass media: television (Anna Eddy), radio and press (Tatiana Ivankova), Internet (Elena Lawrick); Chapter 10 (Olesya Lazaretnaya) – tourism; Chapter 11 (Anna Eddy) – youth subcultures, pop culture, non-mainstream social groups; Chapter 12 (Irina Ustinova) – advertising, and Chapter 13 (Evgenia Butenina) – literature. Chapter 13 examines Russian bilinguals writing in English; their Russianness and their double cultural identity. The discussion focuses on Russian writers in America (e.g., Vasiliy Aksyonov, his ‘untranslatable allusive resonance’) and the new search for Russian-American (literary) identity through Russian classics (Anya Ulinich – Osip Mandelstam; Lara Vapnyar – Fyodor Dostoevsky; Irina Reyn – Leo Tolstoy; Chekhovian miniatures of Ellen Litman and David Bezmozgis; Chekhovian allusions in Gary Shteyngart).
To be recognized, a variety needs a positive attitude of its users. Controversies regarding Russian English are accounted for by the complex attitudes of Russian speakers toward the English they use, which is reflected in Part III. This part includes four chapters.
Chapter 14 (Irina Ustinova) illuminates competition between two international languages – English and Russian. The reduction of functions of Russian as an international language has allowed for the increased use of English between and within the former Soviet republics and the current autonomous republics of the Russian Federation.
Chapter 15 (Olesya Lazaretnaya) focuses on linguistic purism issues in Russia. First, it shows how the legislative processes promoting multilingualism in the 1990s through early 2000s were overthrown by a number of laws and decrees securing the dominant position of the Russian language as a means of interethnic communication and a symbol of national identity. The government-sponsored measures to support the status of Russian as a world language are examined. Second, the chapter reveals the attitudes toward English borrowings into Russian and explores the discourse of linguistic purism. Finally, positive attitudes toward English, mostly among the younger generation, are discussed.
Chapter 16 (Zoya Proshina and Irina Ustinova) expounds the state of affairs concerning the revolutionary World Englishes paradigm, which is still little known in Russia and, therefore, has received very limited reception among Russian linguists and other language professionals, who not infrequently associate it with erratology, studying learners’ language features revealed on the basilectal and mesolectal levels. Yet, the chapter presents the positive dynamics of attitude toward the concept of Russian English based on the results of three sociolinguistic surveys conducted in 2005, 2009, and 2013. Slowly but surely, the ideas of the WE paradigm are penetrating into academia, and the gains and achievements of Russian scholars working in this field are reported in the chapter.
Chapter 17 (Maria Lebedko) finalizes the discussion on the Russian speakers’ awareness of Russian English as a secondary means for self-identity in multilingual and multicultural Russia. The material of the chapter is exemplified by the survey of Tuvan students’ self-identity and the effort of Tuvan and foreign scholars to preserve the local minority culture by expressing it in the language of global currency by compiling English dictionaries of the Tuva culture.
This book on Russian English as an emerging variety is the first of its kind. No books on this theme have been published so far. Besides describing the variety per se, the book can also familiarize the international readership with the related linguistic concepts and approaches of Russian linguists that might be hardly known outside of Russia. The proposed focus and the scope of the book are unprecedented and will fill a gap in English language scholarship. We hope that the book will serve as a key source for scholars and students interested in language contact and world Englishes as well as a range of related fields; namely, historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, national languages, and education.
