Realities of bilingualism in the context of language policy in modern Bashkortostan

Abstract

The subject of this research is bilingualism in the context of language policy in modern Bashkortostan. Special attention is given to actualization of the ethno-lingual identity of non-Russian population in the republic. Leaning on the ethnosociological studies, the author examine the scale of proliferation of national-Russian bilingualism in Bashkortostan, analyze the key markers in selection of the native language among some ethnic groups, as well as determine the role of Russian language as a language of interethnic communication. The novelty of this work lies in the attempt to determine the intensity of usage of national languages of non-Russian peoples and their interaction with the Russian language based on the wide-scale ethnosociological studies. The acquired results demonstrate that among Bashkir population, the native language still prevails over Russian by the level of language competence; while among urban Tatars, the Russian language has noticeably exceeded the native language of communication. At the same time, the results of ethnosociological research, confirming the results of the All-Russia Population Census of 2010 on the language competence of the residents of Bashkortostan, testify to the fact that their speech activity is oriented mostly towards learning Russian than the language of their ethnicity.