Ideologies of language revival: Kazakh as school talk

Abstract

Aims and objectives: This paper describes the implicit ideologies that undergird a language revival context and addresses the semiotic processes through which ideological dominance is challenged. It demonstrates the role of everyday family interactions in the re-acquisition of a “native” language of one’s ethnic identity. Design/methodology/approach: The paper addresses the role of language ideology and family language practices in language revitalization. It is a mixed-methods study interpreting micro-level interactional data within the macro-level context documented by previously collected survey data. Data and analysis: The paper draws upon 15 hours of audio-recorded interactional data from one urban family of ethnic Kazakhs in which the children, who were brought up speaking Russian, are enrolled in a Kazakh-medium pre-school. This in-depth, micro-level interactional study is informed by a large-scale survey indicating that urban, Russian-speaking Kazakhs are undergoing dramatic changes in their language views, use, and proficiency. Findings: The interactional analysis revealed changes in the conceptualization of Kazakh—from the vernacular associated with low prestige and backwardness to the high prestige language of school. Examinations of codeswitching in adult–child interactions showed that re-imagining of Kazakh is accomplished through four mutually reinforcing metalanguaging practices—limiting Kazakh to pedagogic formats, constructing Kazakh as school talk, confining Kazakh to “prior text,” and the co-occurrence of a shift to Kazakh with a shift to a meta-communicative frame. Originality: These findings expand our understanding of the discursive processes through which the ideology of revival is created and sustained in day-to-day interactions in the family. The study expands the scholarship on family language policy through its contribution with data from Kazakhstan and its focus on current issues related to post-Soviet experiences. Significance: The study adds to current research in family language policy by providing empirical evidence for conceptualizing the family as a dynamic system in which language policies and identity choices are shaped by parental ideologies and by the broader social and cultural context of family life.

English language choices in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

“…According to the Kazakhstani Constitution and the Law on Languages, access to free public education is a right for all Kazakhstani citizens and the language of instruction (LOI) is Russian or Kazakh, with English taught as a foreign language and/or a content-specific language as aforementioned (Republic of Kazakhstan (RoK), 1993/2017, 1997/2006.…”

“…The first category of research focuses on macro-level language policy, politics, and planning efforts (Bahry et al, 2008(Bahry et al, , 2017Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001). The second category focuses on language revitalisation processes which emerged following the dissolution of the Soviet Union (Smagulova, 2016a(Smagulova, , 2017.…”

The role of agency in the language choices of a trilingual two-year-old in conversation with monolingual grandparents

“…Instead of looking only at the overall patterns of language transmission, recent studies attempt to seek the affective role of grandparents in different types of transnational and multilingual families (Braun, 2011, 2012; Braun & Cline, 2010; Chevalier, 2012; Smagulova, 2017). From a study of 70 trilingual families, half living in England and half in Germany, Braun and Cline (2010) regard the grandparents as having important sociocultural and linguistic influences on the parents’ language practices with their children.…”

Learning and Teaching Russian as a Pluricentric Language

“…Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan with its population of 18,5 million, Kazakh (the ethnic language for more than 65% of the population) is the official state language, and Russian is coofficial, spoken mostly by the ethnically non-Russian population and having many peculiarities differing it from the Russia's norm (Smagulova, 2017;Shaibakova, 2020). The Kazakhization of the Russian language is one of the most advanced cases of hybridity, considering that it started later and on a different basis than Russian contacts with Byelorusian and Ukrainian (both Slavic languages).…”