Languages of Minority Ethnic Groups of Southern Siberia: Status-Discursive Representation in the Socio-Cultural Context

Abstract

The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the status-discursive representation of the indigenous languages on the example of the Republics of Southern Siberia with the involvement of empirical sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic material. The presence of zones of social consensus in the conditions of the trilingual communicative space of the republics, which is organized according to a single model “two state languages (Russian and titular) + language/languages of the respective indigenous ethnic groups”, is revealed. They are due to the common legal support of indigenous nations and their languages in the international and Russian official discourse, as well as the positive perception of minority ethnic groups in associative portrayal by speakers of the respective republican state languages. The prospects for minimizing the exclusion zones of contacting peoples refer to the inclusion of measures of more active support of the indigenous idioms in the relevant legal acts of the republican level. Certain zones of problematizing of socio-cultural mutual understanding in the Altai Republic are associated with a higher level of adherence of the Chelkans to their native idiom compared to loyalty to the second state language of their republic (Altai), which may be due to the actualization of their need for a correlation of ethnic and linguistic status, which is absent among Shors and Tuvan Todzhans.