Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Who Sent The Devil Down To Georgia? An Analysis Of The Causes Of The Russo-Georgian War Of 2008 And Its Effects On Georgian Democracy, Kris Bohnenstiehl

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

No abstract provided.

"Russian Overseas Flagship" И Языковая Ситуация В Казахстане, Элеонора Д. Сулейменова

Russian Language Journal

The image of Kazakhstan as a multilingual country is associated with the metonymic identification of its constituent ethnic groups and 117 local languages. The dynamics of the linguistic situation (1970-2019) indicate a strong tendency towards linguistic homogeneity. Ethnic groups at demographic risk, divorced from their historic homelands, are immersed in a rapid shift towards the Russian language. The demonstrated vitality of the languages of individual ethnic groups is related to the specifics of their respective proficiencies in Kazakh and Russian. Evidence of the emergence of a regional variant of the Russian language is cited and carefully reviewed, but found to …

Understanding The Cultural And Nationalistic Impacts Of The Moguchaya Kuchka, Austin M. Doub

Musical Offerings

This paper explores Russian culture beginning in the mid nineteenth-century as the leading group of composers and musicians known as the moguchaya kuchka, or The Mighty Five, sought to influence Russian culture and develop a "pure" school of Russian music amid rampant westernization. Comprised of César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, this group of inspired musicians opposed westernization and supported Official Nationalism by the incorporation of folklore, local village traditions, and promotion of their Tsar as a supreme political leader. In particular, the works of Balakirev, Cui, and Mussorgsky established cultural pride and contributed …

Retro-Future In Post-Soviet Dystopia, Sergey Toymentsev

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Retro-Future in Post-Soviet Dystopia” Sergey Toymentsev explores the vision of retrospective future in such Russian novels as Tatiana Tolstaya’s The Slynx, Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, and Dmitry Bykov’s Zhd. Unlike Zamyatin’s and Platonov’s anti-Soviet satires, post-Soviet dystopias do not respond to any utopian narrative, but project the historical and ideological reality of Russia’s violent (predominantly Soviet) past into the future. Such a traumatic reenactment of the Soviet past in the dystopian future testifies to the rise of authoritarianism in contemporary Russia as well as its incomplete collective memory …

Russian Heritage Language Speakers In The U.S.: A Profile, Olga Kagan

Russian Language Journal

Brecht and Ingold (2002) advocate systematic efforts to develop heritage language (HL) pedagogy to remedy U.S. language deficits: “…because of [heritage language learners’(HLLs’)] existing language and cultural knowledge, they may require substantially less instructional time than other learners to develop these skills. This is especially true for speakers of the less commonly taught languages” (p. 1).

Russian is one of those less commonly taught languages in the U.S. that is critically important for national security and the global economy. Since the early 1970s, when a large wave of Russian-speaking immigrants began to settle in the U.S., American universities have had …

Piloting A Dynamic Assessment Model: Russian Nominal Morphology As A Building Block For L2 Listening Development, Rimma Ableeva, Olga Thomason

Russian Language Journal

Second language (L2) Russian research identifies listening comprehension as the least developed language ability among university students and points to the importance of listening instruction in Russian programs (e.g., Rifkin 2005; Comer 2012a; Isurin 2013). For example, Rifkin (2005, 11) states that students typically exhibit an “intermediate-low level of L2 listening proficiency” after completion of a 4-year Russian program. According to Isurin (2013, 39), the survey conducted among L2 Russian learners and instructors acknowledged “listening comprehension as the most problematic area in students’ language proficiency in general.” Comer (2012a) attributes poor listening ability to insufficient teaching materials and activities as …

Lexical Profile Of L2 Russian Textbooks, Ekaterina Talalakina, Tony Brown, Mikhail Kamrotov

Russian Language Journal

Traditionally, the link between vocabulary mastery and reading comprehension has been examined through the prism of lexical thresholds and vocabulary coverage (Milton 2009). Lexical thresholds represent the most frequent words in a language (i.e., lemmas, or dictionary forms of a word) and usually come in increments of 1,000. In relation to the Russian National Corpus, knowledge of the 1,000 most frequent lemmas allows for comprehension of 60% of a text’s vocabulary, 2,000 lemmas – 69%, and 10,000 – 85% (Lyashevskaya and Sharoff 2009, v). These figures support an earlier estimation by Brown (1996, 2), who claimed (without elaborating on what …

Cultural Differences In Russian And American Magazine Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach, Emily Furner

Russian Language Journal

Though some may think that TRANSLATION and LOCALIZATION are two words that represent the same function, many scholars make a distinction between the two terms, and some even add a third term, GLOBALIZATION, into the mix. Translator and localization specialist Bert Esselink (1998) perhaps best defined the distinctions in these terms: Globalization […] is typically used in a sales and marketing context, i.e., it is the process by which a company breaks free of the home markets to pursue business opportunities wherever their customers may be located. Translation is the process of converting written or displayed text or spoken words …

Review: Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Alla A. Smyslova, Alexandra Portice

Russian Language Journal

Anindita Banerjee’s critical reader provides excellent insight into the development of science fiction literature and cinema in Russia from the early nineteenth century all the way to the mid-2000s. The book features four sections, each of them comprising four articles by different authors, and an introduction from the editor. The latter provides a brief but brilliant overview of Russian nauchnaia fantastika, or “scientific fantasy,” positioning it within the context of literary, social, and scientific life in the USSR, as well as outlining the existing scholarship on the topic. From the very beginning, when the genre first emerged at the turn …

Power And Pride: The Mythologization Of The Cossack Figure In Russian History And Its Impact On Modern Russian National Identity, Rachael Ulrich

Kaleidoscope

Our expedition traveled to the Don Cossack Ust- Khopiorskaia Stanitsa to record mythologized cultural practices in the form of rituals and performances. Located on the banks of the Don and Khopior River junction, about 1,500 people reside in a village consisting of several streets of wooden and stone houses, a cultural center, a school, and a few small markets. Most remaining residents in the village are pensioners, who support their meager incomes with backyard gardens. The young who have finished primary school leave for the nearest city, Volgograd, to find work or pursue further studies, because opportunities for neither exist …

Review Essay: Popularizing Russian Language, Michael S. Gorham

Russian Language Journal

In an era rife with complaints over the degradation of language in the face of a host of commonly cited bugaboos (inferior schools, lazy pupils, declining morals, insidious new media technologies), one can only be heartened by the fact that language and language usage continue to be a source of popular discussion and debate. Even in American culture, where reverence for the national tongue has historically paled compared to the likes of France and Russia, one can find regular language-related rubrics in both print and broadcast media (e.g. “Word on the Street” and “Week in Words” [Wall St. Journal], “On …

Великий И Могучий Олбанский Язык: The Russian Internet And The Russian Language*, Daniela S. Hristova

Russian Language Journal

The worldwide proliferation of the Internet as a fundamentally new media technology has coincided with a radical social and linguistic liberalization in Russia. This junction changed drastically the interrelationship between the standard language and the non‐standard language varieties. A paradigmatic manifestation of the new Russian linguistic reality is the prevalent Internet trend of alternate spellings and non‐normative lexical use. The phenomenon is frequently referred to as an “Olbanian” language and associated with the counter‐culture of the so‐called “padonki.” Disregarding the fundamental principles of Russian orthography, spelling, and even morphology, the padonki have created an idiom that seemingly allows complete freedom …

No Mere Reflection: Mirrors As Windows On Russian Culture, Julia Chadaga

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay traces the development of mirror use in Russia from the medieval period to the modern day with particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the utilitarian and symbolic functions of this object. I examine how the discourse around mirrors in Russia was shaped by a preoccupation with border-crossing and identity that is distinctive to Russian culture as well as by mirror lore from other world traditions; and I demonstrate that the presence of mirrors shaped the production of imaginative literature in profound ways. The essay focuses on several key functions of the Russian mirror: as a site of …

Marcus C. Levitt And Tatyana Novikov, Eds. Times Of Trouble: Violence In Russian Literature And Culture, Walter F. Kolonosky

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

While violence is a given in Russian literature and culture, its presence does not suggest that Russian civilization is characterized by a bloody monochromatic hue…

Birth Language Attrition And Reacquisition In Russian Adoptees, Avram J. Lyon

Russian Language Journal

The wave of adoption from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union has brought a large number of incomplete Russian speakers into the United States; over 71,000 orphans from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have been issued United States entry visas since 1992 (U.S. Department of State 2007 and 2009; Ruggiero 2007). This is part of a larger trend toward international adoption, amounting to several hundred thousand children in the past decades. Children adopted by American families experience a radical reduction in birth language exposure and must quickly acclimate to and become proficient in the language of the …

Introduction To Volume 58

Russian Language Journal

It was the Russian linguist, Grigorii Vinokur, who first introduced the term “kul’tura iazyka” or “language culture” to Russian in his writings on the changes taking place in the Russian language in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution (Kul’tura iazyka [Moscow 1929]). Loosely defined as language production at all ranges of the discursive spectrum, the term provided Vinokur with a useful heuristic for writing about language in flux in a manner that took into account not just the high-end linguistic production of belles-lettres, but also the everyday language use (and abuse) of more mundane, but equally influential sources – including …

Писатели О Языке: Contemporary Russian Writers On The Language Question, Ingunn Lunde

Russian Language Journal

Post-perestroika Russian society exhibits a pronounced concern with the language question. Linguistic issues are discussed at all levels of society, and a great many people engage in these debates: politicians, philologists, teachers, journalists, writers, students, bloggers, and others. Newspapers and journals feature columns or article series devoted to language; conferences discuss “the state of the Russian language”; the state sponsors a large number of radio and television programmes on language and language culture; various centres and institutions offer programmes promoting linguistic cultivation; there are information services on linguistic questions on the Internet; many blogs deal with the language question.

On The Satirical Counter-Discourse Of Processed Cheese, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke

Russian Language Journal

The post-Soviet period presents an illuminating picture of competition taking place between different public discourses for meaning construction and articulation. It has been observed that after an initial period when the public narrative of the nation experienced fragmentation, and, using Pierre Bourdieu’s term, went through a period of heterodoxy during the last decade―roughly corresponding with the presidency of Vladimir Putin―it has displayed the growing characteristics of orthodoxy, with its centrally produced “common sense” meanings and assumptions.

Introduction To Volume 57

Russian Language Journal

Volume 57 of Russian Language Journal presents a distinguished set of U.S. and international research studies and reports reflecting the three major directions of RLJ: two significant contributions in the area of the description of contemporary standard Russian; two new works in the area of Russian language policy (one a corpus study, the other a status report); four new empirical studies on the acquisition of Russian as a foreign language by adult English-speaking learners; and two valuable studies ― one American, one Russian ― on recent changes affecting Russian in the foreign language classroom environment.

Introduction To Volume 56

Russian Language Journal

In his recent study of the linkage between corpus and status planning in language policy formation, Joshua Fishman observes that “languages are increasingly viewed as scarce national resources (not unlike flora and fauna, agricultural or environmental resources, and all other such improvable or alterable resources whose quality can be influenced by planned human intervention).” Given the particular history of language policy development in Russia and the former Soviet states in the 20th century, the appearance in mid-2005 of the new Law on the State Language of the Russian Federation is an event of considerable potential impact on the study and …

Russian As The National Language: An Overview Of Language Planning In The Russian Federation, Joan F. Chevalier

Russian Language Journal

In June of 2005 the federal legislation On the national language was signed into law by Vladimir Putin.1 The bill, revised and renamed several times after its initial introduction in the Duma in 2001, proved to be highly controversial, stimulating lively public debate. The law merits discussion as the first major piece of federation legislation focused on language policy and language planning to appear in the Russian Federation in several years. The law addresses both language‐status planning, which concerns the status and function of the Russian language, and language corpus planning, which attempts to affect changes in language forms and …

“The State Turning To Language”: Power And Identity In Russian Language Policy Today, Lara Ryazanova‐Clarke

Russian Language Journal

The first years of the twenty‐first century in Russia saw a considerable rise in the state’s regulation of language. In the words of one of the agents of this regulation, Natalia Liashchenko, a Consultant for the Committee for the Nationalities, “Определенный поворот к проблемам русского языка произошел и в органах государственной власти России.” The engagement of the state by way of regulations in the national discussion of the nature and quality of the Russian language demonstrates ‘the state power turning to language’.

Toward A Meta Understanding Of Reality: The Problem Of Reference In Russian Metarealist Poetry , Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Through an in-depth analysis of Russian metarealist poetry, the paper seeks to undermine the increasingly popular belief in the self-referential nature of postmodern literature and deconstructive writing. To challenge the conviction that postmodern texts have cut off literary discourse from reality, the author focuses on the writing of Olga Sedakova and Elena Shvarts. Her analysis of Sedakova's Vrata, Okna, Arki attempts to draw a parallel between the schools of Russian symbolism and metarealism, and demonstrate the increased referential potential of metarealist writing. While symbolism juxtaposes the mundane reality here to the eternal spiritual world beyond, she argues in the …

Globalization, Internationalization, And Language Learning In Russia, Liudmila Verbitskaya

Russian Language Journal

In reviewing international trends over the last few decades, two words— globalization and internationalization—inevitably come to mind. Thinkers around the world are pondering these processes, which are rooted in the technological and social changes of the last quarter of the twentieth century.

The notions of globalization and internationalization are obviously related, but exactly what do they mean? In The Globalization of Higher Education, Peter Scott (1998a) concludes that not only are the words not synonyms, but the processes they denote are radically different and even dialectically opposed.

Recollecting Wondrous Moments: Father Pushkin, Mother Russia, And Intertextual Memory In Tatyana Tolstaya's "Night" And "Limpopo", Karen R. Smith

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

With their references to Alexander Pushkin, Tolstaya's "Night" and "Limpopo" respond to the cultural crisis of 1980s Russia, where literary language, bent for so long into the service of totalitarianism, suffers the scars of amnesia. Recycling Pushkin's tropes, particularly his images of feminine inspiration derived from the cultural archetype of Mother Russia, Tolstaya's stories appear nostalgically to rescue Russia's literary memory, but they also accentuate the crisis of the present, the gap between the apparel of literary language and that which it purports to clothe. "Night," an ironic reworking of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades," dismantles the nostalgic imagery of his …

The "Incongruous Stranger" As Structural Element In The Novels Of Elsa Triolet, Lorene M. Birden

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In Language in Literature, Roman Jakobson underlines the presence of a certain device, which he calls he superfluous passerby, in Russian realist literature. This element has traveled into French literature with a Russian-born expatriate novelist. Several works by Eisa Triolet present this type of character, and extend the device structurally. In this device a character can provoke a new development in plot or character relations. Such a character has no direct relationship to the characters or events portrayed. Therefore, as opposed to classic novelistic perspective, this incongruous and unknown character shifts and blurs characterial hierarchy. The superfluous passerby displaces …

Introduction: Centrifuge And Fragmentation, Helena Goscilo

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The seismic changes inaugurated by desovietization not only recast the entire framework of Russia's cultural priorities, production, and reception, but ultimately revised fundamental concepts of what constitutes culture…

Trends. Wanted: Russian Nuclear Security And A Primer On Russian Psychology, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses whether or not the United States Government (USG) tax payer's dollars-if any-should be expended towards nuclear security in Russia.