Authors

Kapitolina Fedorova¹; Lara Ryazanova-Clarke²; Natalia Tshuikina¹; Vera Zvereva³; Mika Lähteenmäki³; Igors Koškins⁴; Tatjana Stoikova⁵;  ¹ Tallinn University, Estonia;  ² The University of Edinburgh, UK;  ³ University of Jyväskylä, Finland;  ⁴ University of Latvia, Latvia;  ⁵ Ventspils University of Applied Sciences, Latvia

Discussion

Besides being the national language of Russian Federation, Russian, due to its long history as a main language first, of the Russian Empire and later, of the Soviet Union, is currently used by millions of people outside Russia, both as a mother tongue and a lingua franca. It means that the very nature of so-called Russian diasporas can be very different since it may, or may not, include people identifying themselves as ethnically Russian, or having any connections with the Russian Federation. In their language use, Russian speakers outside Russia tend to orient to the norms of Standard Russian as it is supposed to be used in the country. However, their actual communication patterns are affected by non-monolingual conditions of their everyday reality and diverse ethnic and cultural composition of Russian speaking groups. In fact, the versions of Russian used in different parts of the world have many peculiarities, and their speakers, when constructing their identity, have to oppose both to speakers of other languages of the countries of their residence, and to idealized ‘true Russian speakers’, i.e. monolingual Russians. Those versions, by analogy with World Englishes, could be called ‘World Russians’, make the Russian-speaking world more polycentric and diverse, liberated from the official cultural hegemony of the Russian state. The round-table aims at discussing such an approach and its possible impact on changes in Russian speakers’ language attitudes.