Lara Ryazanova-Clarke - Böcker

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.

This is the first of two companion volumes which examine language use and language attitudes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, focusing on the transitional period from the Enlightenment to the age of Pushkin. Set against the background of the rapid transformation of Russia into a major European power, the two volumes of French and Russian in Imperial Russia consider the functions of multilingualism and the use of French as a prestige language among the elite, as well as the benefits of Franco-Russian bilingualism and the anxieties to which it gave rise. This first volume, provides insight into the development of the practice of speaking and writing French at the Russian court and among the Russian nobility from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. It examines linguistic practice, the use of French in Russia in various spheres, domains and genres, as well as the interplay between the two languages. Including examples of French lexical influence on Russian, this volume takes a sociolinguistic interest in language choice, code-switching and the degree to which the language community being observed was bilingual or diglossic.A comprehensive and original contribution to the multidisciplinary study of language, the two volumes address, from a historical viewpoint, subjects of relevance to sociolinguists (especially bilingualism and multilingualism), social and cultural historians (social and national identity, linguistic and cultural borrowing), Slavists (the relationship of Russian and western culture) and students of the European Enlightenment, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism and cultural nationalism.

This is the second of two companion volumes which examine language use and language attitudes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, focusing on the transitional period from the Enlightenment to the age of Pushkin. Set against the background of the rapid transformation of Russia into a major European power, the two volumes of French and Russian in Imperial Russia consider the functions of multilingualism and the use of French as a prestige language among the elite, as well as the benefits of Franco-Russian bilingualism and the anxieties to which it gave rise. This second volume, Language Attitudes and Identity, explores the impact of French on Russian language attitudes, especially among the literary community. It examines the ways in which perceptions of Russian francophonie helped to shape social, political and cultural identity as Russia began to seek space of its own in the European cultural landscape. In the process, it investigates approaches to translation, journalistic debate about language, literary representation of devotees of French social practice and fashion, and manifestations of linguistic purism and patriotism.A comprehensive and original contribution to the multidisciplinary study of language, the two volumes address, from a historical viewpoint, subjects of relevance to sociolinguists (especially bilingualism and multilingualism), social and cultural historians (social and national identity, linguistic and cultural borrowing), Slavists (the relationship of Russian and western culture) and students of the European Enlightenment, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism and cultural nationalism.

The political revolutions which established state socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were accompanied by revolutions in the word, as the communist project implied not only remaking the world but also renaming it. As new institutions, social roles, rituals and behaviours emerged, so did language practices that designated, articulated and performed these phenomena. This book examines the use of communist language in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods. It goes beyond characterising this linguistic variety as crude "newspeak", showing how official language was much more complex – the medium through which important political-ideological messages were elaborated, transmitted and also contested, revealing contradictions, discursive cleavages and performative variations. The book examines the subject comparatively across a range of East European countries besides the Soviet Union, and draws on perspectives from a range of scholarly disciplines – sociolinguistics, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, historiography, and translation studies.Petre Petrov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin.Lara Ryazanova-Clarke is Head of Russian and Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russia Centre in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.