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This article examines public discussions on Kazakh and Russian in post-Soviet Kazakhstan between 1989 and 2019 by using the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse. It focuses on how conflicting knowledge orders of the sociolinguistic reality are discursively (re)produced and advanced by various social actors in order to be accepted as 'true' and 'legitimate' in Kazakhstani society. Based on the concept of gift, the article reconstructs the language conflict as a dynamic discursive process of meaning-making and knowledge ordering in which the cultural values of the Kazakh and Russian language gifts and self-perceptions of Kazakhs and Russians are negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the assimilation of second-generation migrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who grew up in Israel's social and geographic urban periphery. Their upbringing in peripheral towns and neighborhoods exposed them almost exclusively to Mizrahim (Oriental Jews), a stigmatized minority group whose members make up the overwhelming majority in those locations. We argue that their interaction with members of this group resulted in an alternative process of assimilation, which we term Hitmazrehut (Orientalization). Children of migrants, who were unaware of the historical stigmatization of Mizrahim and their culture, conceived of Hitmazrehut as their only viable trajectory of assimilation into what they erroneously perceived as the Israeli mainstream. However, embracing Mizrahi socio-cultural practices, including consumption and production of ethnic culture, religious traditions and romantic partnerships, did not lead to their downward assimilation, as the model predicts. Rather, it allowed second-generation Russian-speaking migrants to fit in and attain social and economic mobility by assimilating sidewards, into the growing Mizrahi middle-class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on multilingualism in the home has approached the family as a fixed unit thus neglecting the dynamic view of the family and its intersection with family language practices. The present study aims to address this gap by focusing on Russian-speaking mothers in Finland who have raised their children bilingually in single-parent as well as in dual-parent families. Russian speakers are the largest minority language group in Finland, and their number is constantly growing. The current study is a contribution to the research on family language practices in the Finnish context. It examines the nexus of shifts in family configurations and language practices and explores how the dynamic changes in family constellations shape language practices in four families. The study reveals that creating new kinships leads to shifts in the language practices of the peripheral family members and that forming voluntary kin can expand heritage language use and enable an overhearer and bystander role for children. Non-residential family members expand the family's linguistic repertoire and support the legitimacy of already established practices. Being sole caretakers enables mothers to encourage language practices that they consider beneficial for their children without encountering any resistance from other family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the question of language diffusion and examine the latest attempt to popularize the Ukrainian language. This effort has been undertaken by the Ukrainian government since 1991. While sociological studies report positive dynamics in Ukrainian language dissemination, in practice, the language adoption progress might be slower than reported. We test this hypothesis using google trends web search data. We apply a Bayesian beta regression model and show that the proposed model is appropriate. The results suggest that the Ukrainian language popularization policy is successful and that the 2022 Russian invasion has considerably intensified the usage of the Ukrainian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociolinguistic context in Azerbaijan today is one in which massive second language learning is taking place. More than a hundred thousand students in Azerbaijan study in Russian immersion schools. The motivation for this research originates from the desire to understand if those students benefit from Russian language education and how challenging it is for Azerbaijani speaking students to learn academic content in the second language. With this study, we attempt to compare the academic achievement of Azerbaijani speaking and Russian speaking students immersed in the Russian language. The aim of surveying students of Russian-medium instruction was to understand if there was an achievement gap between students whose home language was Russian and those whose home language was Azerbaijani. A self-administered survey was conducted among the Russian-taught 7th and 10th grade students across schools in Baku. The results are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is extensive CLIL research on stakeholders' practices, integration of content and language, and pedagogies. However, limited studies report on teachers' pre-existing knowledge before CLIL implementation and how it influences their classroom pedagogy. Using a third space frame, this study examined CLIL implementation in Kazakhstan. It included 15 science teachers who teach science through the English medium of instruction (EMI). A hybrid coding strategy was followed to analyze questionnaires, teachers' science lessons, multimodal teaching-based scenarios, and semi-structured interviews. Our findings revealed that teachers' CLIL implementation was guided by their (1) hybrid beliefs about scientific knowledge and learning, (2) humanising pedagogy, (3) shift to constructivist science pedagogy, and (4) hybrid linguistic stance. We conclude that a third-space perspective diverts the gaze from CLIL teachers' challenges to illuminate the entanglement of teachers' epistemic stance, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and linguistic stance as emergent discursive practices when policy borrowings connect global and local epistemologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health screening instruments are essential in population health research and clinical practice. The strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) self-report version has been widely used across the globe to screen for mental health problems in adolescent populations. This study aimed to explore the psychometric properties of the Latvian and Russian language versions of the SDQ in a representative sample of a general population of Latvian adolescents and establish the population-based normative scores. This analysis was based on data from the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study year 2017/2018 Latvian database. The sample comprised 2683 Latvian and 1321 Russian-speaking 11-, 13-, and 15-year-old adolescents. Significant language-based variance was observed in the mean scores of the externalising subscales of the SDQ, with Latvian-speaking adolescents reporting higher levels of conduct problems and hyperactivity. The reliability was satisfactory (ordinal alpha >0.7) only for the prosocial behaviour, emotional, internalising problems, and total difficulties subscales, while conduct, hyperactivity, peer, and externalising problems scales demonstrated lower internal consistency (ordinal alpha 0.5–0.7). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) did not support the hypothesised narrow-band five-factor or broad-band three-factor structure of the SDQ. The normative banding scores were calculated for both language variants. This study suggests that the self-report SDQ must be used cautiously in Latvian adolescents because some SDQ subscales lack reliability. When used in population research, the internalising subscales seem more reliable than the externalising ones. More research is needed regarding the reliability of the SDQ in clinical adolescent populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1911, Grigorii Rasputin undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That same year, the Katanov brothers published a quadrilingual phrasebook in Jerusalem – in Russian, Greek, Turkish and Arabic – designed for Russian pilgrims. The Russian pilgrim market was a very different one to the western tourist and pilgrim market typically catered to by phrasebook and guidebook authors in Palestine. Russian pilgrims tended to be poorer, of lower socio-economic status, to travel in large groups, and to have limited contact with people and places in Palestine outside the churches and religious sites which were their goal – all of which made their linguistic needs very different. Using Rasputin's own account of his pilgrimage, the Katanov brothers' phrasebook and another contemporary account by English journalist Stephan Graham, this paper explores the Russian pilgrim experience in Jerusalem and how it contrasted with that of the elite western tourists who are most prominent in our written sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge of and experience with culture shock and intercultural communication come under analysis in this autoethnography of a U.S.-American faculty member's Fulbright teaching experience in Uzbekistan. As a relatively new country couched under the blanket of Russian and Chinese influence, Uzbekistan strives to shift its economy, language, and geopolitical connections toward the West. Cultural knowledge about Uzbekistan is likewise still hidden behind the Uzbek and Russian languages, leaving English speakers from the West with few resources to engage in predeparture uncertainty reduction. This manuscript chronicles the early days of a sojourn of a faculty member who had cognitive knowledge of intercultural communication concepts but had no immersion experiences in which to test her abilities to adapt. Anxiety uncertainty management theory offers some insight into the culture shock and adaptation experienced by this faculty member. The study benefits teachers who may enter this or similar cultures, teachers who instruct with an interpreter, and anyone seeking cultural information about Uzbekistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Au lieu du péril : récit d'une vie entre deux langues (2014), Luba Jurgenson (born in Moscow and living in France since 1975) describes her physical experience between two languages, Russian and French. To her, bilingual people have twin bodies. During a hike in the mountains, she was seized by vertigo: the same unsettling vacillation that might affect bilingual people as if they felt a crack between their feet, but which can ultimately be a safe refuge and above all a creative "interstice." In her book, Jurgenson explores this interstice through concrete topics (cities, thresholds, bridges, courtyards), abundant intertextuality, and numerous connections with the arts. Oscillating between an autobiography and a poetic essay, Au lieu du péril is more like a notebook, whose notes and fragments afford Jurgenson precious flexibility and enable her to constantly refine her observations: reflections on language and identity, childhood memories, nocturnal dreams. This article's aim is to approach Jurgenson's translingual praxis from an esthetic angle and to consider its place in 21st century French-language literature while also examining two of the author's more recent books which carry echoes of Au lieu du péril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) suffered a shocking setback when the head of its deep cover (illegal) agent networks in the United States Rudolf Abel, whose real name was William (Willy) Fisher, was arrested in Brooklyn in 1957. After Fisher was swapped for the downed CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and an American PhD student Frederic Pryor in 1962, the KGB attempted to turn the setback into a public relations victory by constructing the myth of an ideal Soviet intelligence officer. However, the myth required that Fisher continue his public life under the assumed identity of Rudolf Abel until his death and beyond. Drawing on KGB archival documents, memoirs of former KGB officers, Fisher's published personal letters, and Russian language journalistic accounts, this article chronicles and analyses both the KGB activities to make Fisher into the mythic Abel and the former officer's seemingly hopeless but remarkably persistent struggle to preserve his personal identity and integrity. A struggle that culminated in a little-known spy fiction novella which, using allusions and metaphors, articulated his critique of the KGB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses a book titled "Russian Emigration in Prague (1918-1945) - Guide" by Anastasia Kopřivová and Lukáš Babka. The book focuses on the history of Russian emigrants in Prague and includes a list of 168 addresses significant to the Russian emigration, accompanied by illustrations. The authors also include photographs of buildings, organizations, and ephemera related to the emigration. The book acknowledges the limited scope of the guide, focusing only on Prague and excluding other regions of the country. The authors also discuss the complexities of determining nationality within the Russian emigration. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the life of the Russian diaspora in interwar Prague. [Extracted from the article]

The memoir narrates how Paul Crego came to study the Russian and Georgian languages. With a background in Soviet Studies, Crego went on to earn degrees in Divinity and Theology at Harvard and the Andover-Newton Theological School before becoming a librarian. Crego's library career, which centered on Georgian and Armenian acquisitions and cataloging, spanned more than 25 years at Harvard and the Library of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilinguals' feelings of difference when switching languages have been discussed extensively. However, this research area has mainly focused on multilinguals dominant in their first language (L1), examining the feelings they experience when using any language other than the L1 (LX). The present study offers a novel perspective on this topic and focuses on 19 Russian Australians belonging to the 1.5 generation, who participated in semi-structured interviews. This generation of childhood sequential bilinguals, by virtue of their early second language (L2) acquisition, is usually L2 dominant or L1+L2 dominant. This study presents qualitative analyses on these speakers' feelings of difference in relation to their L1, Russian, and L2, English. Participants' sense of feeling different typically emerged when using the L1, a language that maintained a strong emotional resonance, even when the speakers were potential L1 attriters. Hence, the combination of the emotional connotations attributed to the L1 and the inability to fully express themselves in this language seemed to intensify these speakers' feelings of difference when using the language. These findings highlight the importance of focusing on the 1.5 generation, and on LX-dominant multilinguals in general, to better understand the potential role of L1 attrition on multilinguals' self-perceptions when switching languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chekhov's biographer Donald Rayfield claims, in two different scholarly works, that Chekhov may have been inspired by the Brontë family's biography when writing his drama Three Sisters (1901). Rayfield's ideas in turn inspired Blake Morrison and Arlene Hutton in their creative adaptations of Three Sisters, in which the plot and structure of Chekhov's drama were supplemented with Brontëan historical characters and themes. In this paper, the author questions whether Chekhov really did know about the family of the three writers from Yorkshire and, accordingly, whether he put this knowledge to work in his own literary endeavour. To this end, the author charts the availability of Russian nineteenth-century translations of the Brontës' works and biographical sources, and examines biographical parallels between Chekhov's family and the Brontës. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines contemporary poems on the Aral Sea crisis. Labelling them Russophone, the authors argue that the Russian language holds its status of lingua franca for the poets concerned about the environmental disaster in Central Asia. In these poems, the Aral Sea has become a central metaphor for the catastrophe that transcends the original case. The depiction of the diverse environmental issues caused by expanded irrigation policies in Soviet Central Asia provides favourable conditions to study these verses primarily from an ecopoetic perspective. Though these poems address one problem, the narrative form remains diverse: some authors apply various images; others personify the Aral Sea. In these verses the desert image acquires an unorthodox interpretation, while the personification of the Aral Sea in the poems reinforces the prior ecopoetry studies. This article investigates the poems' content, historical background and anthropogenic effects on nature that pushed their authors to write them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Matoso's presentation explored various aspects of this new genre, contrasting them with more formalistic approaches to art and examining Bakhtin's proposition that 'Dostoevsky would never have depicted death as Tolstoy did in his 1858 short-story I Three Deaths i '. Professor Matoso highlighted Bakhtin's distinction between the monologic and polyphonic artistic traditions and argued that Dostoevsky's originality lies in his dialogical and carnivalesque approach to character and consciousness, which led to the creation of a new genre: the polyphonic novel. [Extracted from the article]

This conceptual paper argues for the reconfiguring of Intercultural Communication Education (ICE) through a dialogical engagement with Istina (Truth) and Pravda (Truth in Justice). The paper argues that the field of ICE is predominantly characterised by normative conceptualisations of truth (e.g., characterised by fixed or 'objective' interpretations of language and culture) or hyper-relativist post-truth conceptualisations (e.g., non-essentialist approaches to ICE). This conceptual paper, therefore, addresses the following research question: To what extent can a dialogical approach to truth address and redress epistemic power imbalances in ICE? Through engaging with Russian language and the dialogical approach of Mikhail Bakhtin a non-normative approach for ICE is proposed. The paper conceptually argues in moving beyond the binary of normative and post-truth interpretations in ICE through dialogism. The paper serves at an important juncture amidst calls that the field of ICE is characterised by epistemic violence and epistemic power imbalances. The proposed dialogical approach to truth in ICE aims to redress epistemic imbalances in arguing for a form of non-normative dialogical ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The September 2019 elections ended up as a race for the Russian vote. Avigdor Lieberman, founding chairman of the Israel Beitenu party, launched a two-pronged, bilingual campaign in which the party's Hebrew-language Facebook page presented a trilogy titled 'The Tales of Ali Bibi', while its Russian-language website posted a video titled 'The Knight at the Crossroads'. This article analyzes these videos' overt and covert folkloric themes and immigrant motifs and their attempt to transmit Lieberman's encrypted political messages. It shows that for all their differences, both Hebrew- and Russian-language videos presented a negative campaign that predominantly focused on political opponent(s)' alleged flaws rather than on Lieberman's virtues and/or achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volodymyr Zelensky and his party Sluha Narodu won Ukraine's 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections after espousing populist rhetoric. Yet their brand of populism diverged from the far left, the far right, and the center. We propose that Zelensky and Sluha Narodu campaigned as "anti-polarization" populists, drawing on opposition to pre-existing polarization in the Ukrainian political establishment while capitalizing on weak party identification among Ukrainian voters. We utilize electoral results, data from a survey carried out immediately prior to the 2019 parliamentary elections, and interviews to identify Sluha Narodu's sources of support. We find Sluha Narodu's supporters were more likely to hold moderately strong or neutral opinions on key issues in Ukrainian politics and to mix both the Russian and Ukrainian languages in their daily lives. Interviews suggest these voters valued character in choosing Sluha Narodu over what were conventionally understood to be salient issues in Ukrainian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a monolingual approach to the teaching of linguistic minority pupils in an English primary school at Key Stage Two (7–11 years old). The work is based on a longitudinal case study of one Russian-speaking migrant pupil and her schooled experience. The analysis and discussion explicate the prohibition of the first or home language (Russian) in the school, and reveal how denying a seven-year-old migrant child permission to use her L1 is detrimental to her learning experience and her well-being. The focal data derive from participant-observation fieldnotes, visual artefacts and interviews with the child, her mother, and a class teacher over a 7-month period. Through an analysis of the participants' stancetaking, we show how the pupil's voice is inaudible in her struggle against a monolingual attitude towards her bilingualism and multicompetence. Our contribution therefore builds on work in critical migrant language education, to identify the importance of enabling the presence of the L1 in learning for migrant pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-imperial ethnic identities and divides are often constructed and construed through direct and indirect references to imperial legacies. In this study, we use nationally representative survey data to examine proficiency, use, and valuation of the Russian language – a major such legacy of the Soviet empire – in Kyrgyzstan, a multiethnic Central Asian nation with a long and complex history of ethnic and regional cleavages. The multivariable analyses produce instructive net variations in Russian proficiency and use across regional subgroups of ethnic Kyrgyz, the titular ethnicity, and between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, a marginalized ethnic minority. The analyses also show that the command and use of Russian increase with community ethnic heterogeneity. Yet, no variations along these axes are found in the perceived importance of Russian language knowledge for success in the domestic labour market. These findings are situated within the interconnected contexts of historical ethnolinguistic legacies, dynamics of nation-building, and geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper information is presented about a recent didactic project launched by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, developed as a resource for teaching Russian. The authors are the lecturers of Russian Language and Culture at the Centre for Slavic Studies – a unit of the above-mentioned Faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article discusses some problems relating to the systemic-communicative method and culture- through-language studies (лингвострановедческих аспектов) aspects of teaching the Russian language outside the language environment, more specifically, in Portugal, and in accordance with this, the question of the perfect knowledge of the language of students and its use by the teacher in the classroom is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multimodal nature of daily interactions in the twenty-first century has led to growing calls for the inclusion of multimodal content like comics in foreign language classrooms. Such content, as opposed to traditional language textbooks, can boost learners' self-confidence and more effectively develop their multimodal competence, including their willingness to use foreign languages via diverse media. This article reports on an exploratory study involving a teacher of Russian as a foreign language (RFL) and her students that investigated how the use of comics as a pedagogical resource affected the students' willingness to communicate (WTC) in Russian, the teacher's level of engagement with her students, and her professional development. The study drew on interviews, classroom observations, and samples of students' written production over two semesters. The study's findings revealed that the use of comics boosted the students' WTC in Russian multimodally, as well as their desire to read in the other languages they knew. The students exhibited a greater willingness to speak Russian during lessons, interact with others in Russian via social media networks, produce art that incorporated Russian, and engage in performative behavior using Russian in the classroom and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result, the Russian lens dominates not only the all-Russian/Soviet realm but is continuously applicable to examining other Soviet republics - Ukraine and Belarus in particular. Civil unrest in Belarus in 2020-21, and the popular mobilization of Ukrainians against the invading Russian army since 2014 - most prominently since 24 February 2022 - prove that Russia-centred narratives of the past help little to make sense of the region's present. In the end, Belarus, as Russia or any other republic, did not become Soviet overnight, since the notion of a Soviet identity was itself in the making. [Extracted from the article]

This study contributes to the insufficiently investigated subject of the perception of Ernest Rutherford in Russia. It also examines Rutherford's impact, both as a scientist and as an outstanding New Zealander, on matters of freedom of science in Imperial Russia and in the early Soviet Union and on human factors during times of social stress and repression. The examples given are drawn from a range of unique primary sources, in particular private correspondence between Rutherford and his Russian students and interns such as G. Antonoff, K. Yakovleff, J. Szmidt, N. Shilov, P. Kapitsa and others, their letters, diaries, photos and publications about their experience of working with Rutherford, including those available in the Russian language only, previously unpublished or unknown to academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of creative techniques in a study of the experiences of Russian-speaking linguistic-minority migrant children in English state-funded primary schools at Key Stage Two (7-11 years old). The methodology is based on an interpretative paradigm using a qualitative research approach: a longitudinal multiple-case study with four embedded cases (each case representing one pupil). Focusing on specific examples from the research, the paper considers the benefits of using creative techniques within interviews to generate unique data with linguistic-minority pupils, the constraints of the techniques, and possible solutions for these. The cyclic (i.e. rounds of repeated interviews) research design, which focused on the processes of change, called for systematic alternation of the techniques. I demonstrate the unique integration of board games (the 'interview-through-game') and the 'filling-in exercise' in the interviews. This enabled a continuous adjustment of the techniques by me and by the children, retaining both the systematicity and flexibility (or constraint and emergence) of the creative techniques' development and application. This design helped to reveal the experiences/issues of the participating children, which would otherwise be challenging to explore using other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing literature on third-sector support for ageing migrants shows that social clubs can be a vital source of social support, what remains unclear is how these positive outcomes are attained on an interactional level. Drawing on fieldwork conducted over the course of one year in a meeting place for older Russian-speaking migrants in the capital region of Finland, this paper adopts a processual approach to examine how a sense of groupness is negotiated in the meeting place. The attendees of the meeting place comprise of different nationalities and backgrounds, who mainly share age and Russian language. This heterogeneity creates a situation where the attendees, together with the organisers, negotiate a sense of groupness with the category of 'Russian-speaking'. I argue that such a sense of groupness is reached by drawing from shared traits of culturality, while excluding aspects that could cause conflicts. The paper further contributes to the literature on groupness by analysing what role atmosphere plays in attaining a sense of groupness, and argues that the notion of atmosphere is important to take into consideration when thinking how different places can support ageing and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores and compares the visual images used by Channel One (Ch1), Russia's biggest state-aligned television broadcaster, to justify Russia's intervention in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent history: the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and Syria's civil war. The data reveal that while Ch1's projection of Ukrainian conflict is anchored in compassion to the Eastern Ukraine population speaking the Russian language, the Syrian war is framed to fuel the feeling of national pride by focusing on the Russian greatness as a political and military superpower. This research, thus, extends the theoretical understanding of media representation of war, especially how the changing political context impacts which identities are represented and made potent through different emotional appeals. The article conceptualises visual images as affective anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses and construct emotional relationships between the audience and mediated events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches Russophone groups in Estonia and Germany as discursive subjects and producers of their own narratives and storylines that are either technically independent from Moscow's control or implicitly challenge Kremlin's propaganda. The major goal of this research is to compare how the German and Estonian Russophone communities react to the situation of information warfare in which they are important targets of Russia's 'compatriot policies', on the one hand, and sources of new and often alternative discourses of their own, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined factors determining parental success in transmitting heritage language (HL) and literacy in Russian-speaking migrant families of comparable socioeconomic status (SES) in Cyprus, Ireland, Israel and Sweden. A total of 345 Russian speakers completed a questionnaire about their language use and home language practices. Of those, we chose 181 females with at least one child of school age. Across countries, we found no differences in the respondents' SES or education, but differences in their self-identification with the host country languages and cultures. Results also showed that 90% of participants' children could speak and understand Russian. However, only 52% could read and write in Russian, with percentages varying between countries. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the transmission of HL-Russian and literacy depended on parental efforts to actively use Russian at home and provide opportunities to communicate in HL. As for literacy, parental efforts and language use remained the main transmission predictors in all the countries, but factors differed across the countries, possibly due to varying attitudes towards Russian in the society. Likely, success in HL and literacy transmission is influenced by parents' perception of acceptance of their language in the society where they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Palestinian cultural Nahḍa that emerged with local nationalism in the early twentieth century was in part carried forward by members of the Arab-Palestinian Orthodox community. Their status in the Palestinian and Arab society of the time has to be contextualised in their relationship to the Russian language and even more so to the Russian educational enterprise in Palestine. Some of these cultural agents attended the schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) which were first set up in isolated villages in the Galilee region and later in Nazareth and Beit Jala. This article, based primarily on Arabic-Palestinian sources as well as my research in some of the looted Palestinian archives located in Jerusalem, stresses the relationship between the Russian educational missionary enterprise in Palestine and the leaders of the Arab Nahḍa. The historical development of this Russian enterprise, which included the development of different schools and teaching programmes, is connected to case studies of a number of cultural agents and the fields in which they excelled (teaching, translation, the press, literature, music and theatre). This article finally focuses on the Palestinian Nahḍawi cultural field which has been neglected by previous research for various reasons (linguistics, access to archives and the prevalence of Egypt and Lebanon in the study of Nahḍa themes). Focusing on a cultural approach, this article provides a better understanding of the making of Palestinian national and cultural consciousness. (I would like to dedicate this paper as a tribute to Ḥanā abū Ḥanā (1928-). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Russian speakers in Ireland delimit and describe (their/the) Russian language in relation to representations of standard Russian. It is based on analysis of discussions conducted between speakers of Russian living in Ireland, facilitated by the Our Languages (2008–2011) research project, investigating multilingualism and sociolinguistic dispositions amid Ireland's Russian-speaking population. Three metalinguistic orientations are foregrounded: (1) participants affirm the naturally and normatively discrete identity of 'the' Russian language; (2) despite this unitary identity, participants distinguish between registers and levels of relative purity in Russian; (3) participants relate generalised linguistic form to a concept of community. The interplay of these orientations – toward an essentially unitary and unifying Russian language, away from 'improper' forms of that language, and into reflection on collective identity – reveals a model culture of standard language within the polyglossic context of Irish society, combining the routinely claimed characteristics of generality and authenticity. The article interprets the contradictory dynamic between these characteristics in relation to a Bakhtinian concept of monolingualism and a critical conceptualisation of language community. Participants configure Russian as one among 'our languages' through the iterative negotiation of a tension between ideological monolingualism and actual heteroglossia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study on language ideologies and multilingualism in Ukraine, I start from Geeraerts approach, which identifies two cultural models of linguistic standardisation: rationalist and romantic. Drawing on this typology, I show that the present-day ideology is a largely distorted version of the romantic model that transforms into linguistic determinism. Suggesting that thought is completely governed by language, this deterministic stance is manifested in the continuous revision of norms for Standard Ukrainian and also guides current educational innovations in the country. I further examine perceptions of languages in a local school setting, where Ukrainian is the language of instruction while Russian is chiefly spoken outside of it. Drawing upon a survey of school pupils and in-school proficiency tests, I discuss the attitudes of speakers whose first language (L1) is different from their language of schooling, as well as of those who still choose to be educated in their L1. I conclude that, while students in the Russian-medium school more readily embrace bilingualism in education, the overall appreciation of Ukrainian and Russian, governed respectively by the romantic and the rationalist views, is similar across both the types of schools in question and combines into a positive understanding of multilingual practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These articles initially appeared in English translation in I The Current Digest of the Soviet Press i (1949-1991), I The Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press i (1992-2010) and I The Current Digest of the Russian Press i , all published weekly by East View Press. Mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), diplomatic efforts to bridge the gap between Armenia and Azerbaijan were intense, especially when Heydar Aliyev was president of Azerbaijan. The articles are selected from Russian language newspapers, published in Russia as well as in Armenia and Azerbaijan, such as I Bakinsky rabochy i , I Krasnaya zvezda i and I Kommersant" i . [Extracted from the article]

The article presents the procedure and results of a linguistic experimental study of the cognitive characteristics underlying basic ideas about patriotism in the modern Russian language consciousness as identified by the author from previous studies of the semantic content of the concept of PATRIOTISM in accordance with language data. The purpose of the study is to verify the data that was obtained as a result of an analysis of language and textual material as well as to clarify the specific features of how the concept of PATRIOTISM is embodied in the consciousness of modern Russian speakers. The study is based on language data obtained from an associative chain experiment (associations of the word stimulus "patriotism") that was conducted by the author and involved a sample of 100 respondents. The methodological basis of the study consists of the theoretical foundations and principles for analyzing the "language of national culture" that have been developed by modern Russian sociolinguistics within the framework of the cognitive-oriented anthropocentric paradigm proposed by the modern humanities. The study borrows methods from modern conceptual analysis as well as methods that are used to conduct associative chain experiments. As a result, we were able to verify and clarify the current semantic content of the concept of PATRIOTISM, including 17 cognitive characteristics, within the national conceptual space. The main results of the study can be used when drafting teaching and classroom guidelines and lesson plans as well as in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language. They can also be applied in compiling new types of dictionaries, including dictionaries of concepts and thesauri of sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the development of the classics and of notions of classical writers in the Russian language and literature against the background of the European tradition. Beyond the specific scholarly subject, the article explores the general problem of the institutionalization and genre-based repertoire of literary theory; the strategies of literary theory, the function of the classics and classical writers, and the models of preservation and transfer of tradition that were formulated by European theory and Russian literary practice in the late eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how different narratives and interpretations of the Second World War and its outcomes for the Baltic states are negotiated and managed at schools with Russian as the language of instruction in Lithuania. In particular, the article focuses on the ways public (official) and private (family) stories of history interrelate in the school sector and on the roles self-attributed by teachers in managing this public-private divide in teaching history. The empirical data are derived from qualitative fieldwork in schools with Russian as the language of instruction in multi-ethnic urban centers of Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the content of alphabet books published for Russian-speaking children in Latvia, Estonia and Poland in the 1920s and explains the nexus between socio-cultural context and representation of social environment and children's interactions to explore strategies of adaptation offered to children. The textbooks were quantified using a target codifier. The results are embedded in the context of theories of intergenerational cultural transmission and integration of minorities. The textbooks published for Russian-speaking children in Poland and Estonia exemplify a classical postfigurative type of intergenerational transmission to ensure group cohesion protecting against assimilation. The model of transmission in alphabet books published in Latvia is based on encouraging a child to establish values and guidelines independently. Thus, Latvian alphabet books allow a child to join a network of tenuous relationships for integration into the dominant culture. Therefore, the study provides a retrospective of strategies of Russian-speaking minorities' consolidation and integration into dominant societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines depictions of translation in three novels by contemporary translingual writers: Andreï Makine's Le testament français (1995), Michael Idov's Ground Up (2009) and Olga Grjasnowa's Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (2013). All three authors are native speakers of Russian who write literary works in a non-native language and thus belong to a growing number of translingual writers from the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. In each of the selected novels the narrator-protagonist is an immigrant who reflects upon the translingual condition, i.e. the practical and existential challenges of speaking, writing and living in a non-native language. Translation is intrinsic to the plots, characterization and themes of these novels, all of which depict language-switching in various contexts. The Russian protagonist of Makine's Le testament français writes in French and resorts to the subterfuge of a pseudotranslation in order to get his books accepted by a Paris publisher. Idov's Ground Up chronicles the business failure of a Viennese-style café in New York along with the narrator's failure to realize the cosmopolitan ideal that it embodies. Grjasnowa's Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt portrays the challenges faced by a polyglot interpreter who aims for professional mobility in a globalized world. In each of the novels, translation is associated with performance and deception, serving also as a metaphor for translingual experience. Drawing on Alexander Beecroft's concept of ecologies of literature – in particular, vernacular, cosmopolitan, national and global literary ecologies – the analysis considers how these novels depict translation and circulation in various contexts, including everyday communication, business ventures and literary markets. I argue the fictional characters' ideals and approaches to language-switching can be understood in terms of vernacular, cosmopolitan and global modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an in-depth review of Petar Kehayov's monograph The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death: Evidence from Minor Finnic (De Gruyter Mouton, 2017). The book investigates the development of mood and modality in four moribund Finnic languages spoken in the Russian Federation: Votic, Ingrian, Central Lude, and Eastern Seto. After a detailed summary of the book, I discuss a number of issues relating to (a) the semantic map used to analyze the modal meanings; (b) the difference between language death-related changes and "regular" language change; and (c) the explanation of the observed patterns in terms of conceptual complexity. On the last point, I suggest that usage frequency may provide a better explanation for some of the observed changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the concept of orientalism to propose a framework for understanding the relationship between international news media and individual representations of minority groups in Europe. Even though the case study focuses on Narva, Estonia, the model here provides a basis for comparing the identity formation practices, particularly of geographically separated Russian speaking minority groups in Europe. Narva's large Russian speaking population and geographical proximity to Russia have been pinpointed as security concerns due to the convenient source of information and mass media sponsored by the Russian Federation causing a misrepresentation of Russian speaking minority groups in international media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an analysis of the notion of shame in the language consciousness of Russians during two periods of Russia's development – the early 1990s and the early twenty-first century. The data of association experiments are juxtaposed to demonstrate the change that occurred in Russians' worldview in the course of transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. The most striking difference between two Russian samplings consisted in the willingness of some twenty-first-century Russian respondents to comment on shame negatively, while 1990s Russian respondents did not comprehend shame as a negative phenomenon. All findings make it possible to assert that while the cultural core of Russians' worldview remained unchanged, political perturbations triggered alterations in Russians' perception of shame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open Information Extraction (OIE) is a modern strategy to extract the triplet of facts from Web-document collections. However, most part of the current OIE approaches is based on NLP techniques such as POS tagging and dependency parsing, which tools are accessible not to all languages. In this paper, we suggest the logical-linguistic model, which basic mathematical means are logical-algebraic equations of finite predicates algebra. These equations allow expressing a semantic role of the participant of a triplet of the fact (Subject-Predicate-Object) due to the relations of grammatical characteristics of words in the sentence. We propose the model that extracts the unlimited domain-independent number of facts from sentences of different languages. The use of our model allows extracting the facts from unstructured texts without requiring a pre-specified vocabulary, by identifying relations in phrases and associated arguments in arbitrary sentences of English, Kazakh, and Russian languages. We evaluate our approach on corpora of three languages based on English and Kazakh bilingual news websites. We achieve the precision of facts extraction over 87% for English corpus, over 82% for Russian corpus and 71% for Kazakh corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature (GPN) is maintained by the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. It contains the internationally approved forms of place names of planetary and lunar surface features. In the last decades, spacefaring and other nations have started to develop local standardized equivalents of the GPN. This initiated the development of transformation methods and created a need for auxiliary information on the names in the GPN that is not available from the database of the GPN. The creation of 'localized' (local language) variants of the GPN in non-Roman scripts is an unavoidable necessity, but is also a cultural need. This paper investigates the localization methods into Chinese and Russian; two nations with different scripts, and two that are spacefaring ones. The need for the creation of a localized GPN is related to the local importance of scientific papers published in the local language and the existence of locally developed and operated scientific planetary spacecraft, but exceptions exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article is focused on the various types of populism in Estonia (e.g. Estonian national populism, hybrid populist discourse, etc.) in which we discuss the complex phenomenon of populism in two contexts: EU political upheavals (the refugee crisis of 2015 which received special attention from populist politics in Europe) and complex Russian-EU relations. For our analysis we interviewed several Estonian politicians and opinion-leaders. We also analyzed Russian language media sources in Estonia, covering a broad spectrum of populist narratives among the Russophone population of Estonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]