This collection contributes to emerging work in critical sociolinguistics, using a multidisciplinary and multi-scalar approach to understanding the diasporic experience in the Russian-speaking world. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, language and linguistic anthropology.
This collection contributes to emerging work in critical sociolinguistics, using a multidisciplinary and multi-scalar approach to understanding the diasporic experience in the Russian-speaking world.
The volume expands on research in the sociolinguistics of mobility, multilingualism, and diaspora studies. It critically examines the ways in which transnational Russian identities are perceived and discursively enacted in online and offline spaces, and how this interplay contributes to diasporic identification across the globe. In highlighting a range of critical methodologies at multiple scalar levels - across family, national, and global lines - the book raises key questions about what binds and distinguishes individuals belonging to diverse communities of Russian speakers. It likewise interrogates established notions of memory, nostalgia, authenticity, and belonging, as well as perceptions of futurity and change.
This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, language and education, and linguistic anthropology.
List of Contributors, Preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction:
Contextualizing the Volume Olga Solovova and Sabina Vakser,
Chapter 1 The
dissolution of the USSR, the Newly Independent States and their Diaspora
Policies Olga Gulina,
Chapter 2 Towards Post-Russianness? Narrative
Adjustment among Kazakhstani Teachers of Russian Juldyz Smagulova and
Eleonora Suleimenova,
Chapter 3 Russian Immigrants in Portugal: Diasporic
Nationalism and Identities Elena Bulakh,
Chapter 4 Workplace Experiences of
Russian-speaking Women in Japan: Victimhood Narrated Ksenia Golovina and
Varvara Mukhina,
Chapter 5 Russian Speakers in Finland: Online Discussions of
the Russian language Vera Zvereva,
Chapter 6 Bridging and Bonding on-line:
Russian-speaking Migrants in the United Kingdom and Their Social Networks
Oksana Morgunova,
Chapter 7 How to Immigrate into History: Russian Speakers
in the Finnish Border Region and the Politics of Memory in Transnational
Settings Olga Davydova-Minguet, Concluding remarks Renewal as the Unfolding
Future: Ways Forward in Multilingual, Diasporic Research Sabina Vakser and
Olga Solovova, Index
Olga Solovova (PhD in Sociolinguistics) is a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20), University of Coimbra, Portugal. She was a Marie Skodowska Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Norway, with a project on the use of Russian in the trilateral Norway-Russia-Finland borderland. Her research interests include language policies, semiotic landscapes, and speaker-centered approaches to multilingualism.
Sabina Vakser holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. Her doctoral work focused on multilingualism, transnational identity, experiences of migration, and Russianness in family life. Her research interests include the sociolinguistics of mobility, semiotics, somatics, and sensory methodologies.