Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

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.

Rethinking Trümmerliteratur: The Aesthetics Of Destruction Ruins, Ruination, And Ruined Language In The Works Of Böll Grass, And Celan, Kurt R. Buhanan

Theses and Dissertations

Trümmerliteratur - literally “rubble-literature" - is a brand of literature that became important after the Second World War, led by Heinrich Böll, whom I term the apologist of German Trümmerliteratur. Typically included under this classification are the writers who began to produce in the years immediately following the war, and in whose work the rubble and ruins of the landscape figure prominently. Böll provided the programmatic framework for the movement in his “Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur" but his relationship to another type of ruin writing presents a point of friction when he appears to be working in a romantic mode to …

Now I Know My Aбв’S: A Comparison Of Inductive And Deductive Methods Of Teaching On The Acquisition Of The Cyrillic Alphabet, Jennifer Bown, Thomas Bown, Courtenay Christiansen, Shalise Dudley, Shea Gibbons, Janine Green

Russian Language Journal

The study was designed to compare the effects of inductive verse deductive teaching methods on acquisition of the Russian alphabet. Inductive instruction refers to methods in which learners are first exposed to examples and then asked to extrapolate a rule from the example, whereas deductive instruction refers to methods in which learners are presented with a rule from the start. Eighty participants were randomly divided into two instructional groups, one receiving deductive instruction and the other receiving inductive instruction. Participants were given a pretest on Russian words and given instruction on the Cyrillic alphabet based on an inductive or a …

From Meaning To Form: An Alternative Model Of Functional Syntax, Arto Mustajoki

Russian Language Journal

The purpose of this article is to introduce a model for a meaning-based functional syntax. A full description of the model may be found in our recent monograph (Mustajoki 2006b). Work on the model has been carried out in the Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literature at the University of Helsinki over the last fifteen years. Given that the above-mentioned book and various shorter publications (Mustajoki 1997, 1999, 2003a, 2003b, 2004) have appeared in Russian, it seems appropriate to give a short overview of the model in English. The only presentation of the model in English thus far …

Self-Reported Russian And Belarusian Language Utilization In Key Economic, Political, And Social Domains In Belarus, N. Anthony Brown

Russian Language Journal

The elicitation of language usage in the present study was carried out by means of a survey. Language utilization was surveyed in the home, in school, at work, and in government institutions to ascertain whether a functional hierarchy of domains in Belarusian and/or Russian obtains in Belarus. In addition, the study examines whether domain-specific language utilization varies according to participants’ sex. Respondents were asked to evaluate choice of language as “useful” or “necessary” for each domain. Findings reflect self-reports from 559 students born in Belarus and attending eight different institutions of higher education, cumulatively. Data were collected in three cities, …

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’.

A Longitudinal Survey Of The Language Learning Careers Of Actr Advanced Students Of Russian: 1976-2000, Dan E. Davidson, Susan Goodrich Lehmann

Russian Language Journal

In 1976, the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) began sending American college students to Russia for advanced training in Russian language and literature. The original ACTR program was open to qualified students from any U. S. institution and represented one of the very few opportunities available to American students, graduate students, or faculty to pursue advanced language training in Russia, in this case, the newly established A. S. Pushkin Institute of the Russian Language in Moscow. Admission to the program was competitive, and, in practice, the ACTR program accepted for the most part graduate students and immediate-post BA …

The Concept Of “World Language”, V. G. Kostomarov

Russian Language Journal

Although the United Nations has declared that its working languages—English, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, and, more recently, Japanese and Arabic— are “world languages,” there is no strictly linguistic basis for such a claim. Indeed, many linguists reject the term, and many of those who do accept it believe that it denotes—roughly—an artificial global language. Moreover, many find in it an unpleasant hint of the pseudoscientific idea that one language can be superior to another.

Introduction To Volume 55

Russian Language Journal

The present issue of RLJ reflects the new editorial board’s view of the state of Russian study in the U.S. and the world today in the context of globalization, internationalization of curriculum, and increased expectations regarding the outcomes of language study everywhere. (Verbitskaya) While more modest than the bold Soviet-era policy assertions concerning Russian as a “primary language of mass international communication,” Kostomarov addresses the new role of Russian as mother tongue, second language, or major foreign language for more than 300 million speakers in the world, nearly 3 million of whom are now resident in the United States, and …

Articulation: Challenges And Solutions, Martha G. Abbott

Russian Language Journal

Providing students with a seamless progression of language development within the K-12 school curriculum remains a challenge for the foreign-language profession as we enter the new century. As national standards are developed for foreign-language education in the K-12 continuum and school districts throughout the country consider implementing foreign-language programs earlier in the curriculum, we have an opportunity to confront that challenge with renewed vigor.

The Online Language Learning Environment: New Roles For The Humanist, James S. Noblitt

Russian Language Journal

Thomas Edison played an important role in improving the technologies needed for the telephone. He was said to have been excited about the educational potential of the new instrument and speculated that it would soon be found in every classroom.

Well, he was right about the educational potential of information and communication technology, but he was wrong about the form the new technology would take.

This chapter raises questions concerning the role humanists will play in determining the development and implementation of information and communication technologies for educational purposes.