Humanities and social sciences

Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of empirical data collected within the project "Language Regimes in Contemporary Russia: Effects of Language Preferential Policy in Multiethnic Regions" (No. 18011-00763 A), the study discusses which set of factors determines the presence of ethnic activists and the practice of their involvement in initiating and making decisions related to language and, more broadly, ethnic issues in the regions of the Volga Federal District. The empirical data cover the period from 2017 to 2021. Language policy is considered (1) as the state’s political course in the field of ethno-linguistic relations, and (2) as a struggle for its preservation or contestation. The first perspective allows analyzing the extent to which activists have institutional and resource capacity to influence it, while the second focuses on how much they are included in the decision-making process regarding the governance of ethno-linguistic diversity. QCA method revealed a combination of different factors. The most interesting findings are so-called "parsimonious solutions." The first solution (the share of the ethnic group in the region’s population) confirmed the significance of this condition both for positive and comprehensive language policy and for the institutional and resource strength of ethnic activists. The second solution involves the institutional affiliation of the consultative-advisory body representing ethnic activists with the regional head and a low level of urbanization. This combination can be explained by the fact that in conditions of agrarian culture and rural lifestyle, strong social ties based on personal trust and clientelism are more important. Representation in structures connected to the regional head is a resource that allows activists to build their social capital within dense ethnic social networks and a high level of intragroup solidarity characteristic of rural communities.

Binary nature of ethnic and linguistic policy in the Republic of Khakassia aims to ensure full communication in Russian as the national language of the Russian Federation and partially satisfy the need for an ethnic and linguistic identity for the titular Khakassia ethnic group. The ethnic and linguistic identity of the Khakas people remains high. There is a significant share of those who recognize Khakas as their native language. Use of the language on the Internet is also relatively active. Institutional support has helped to increase the prestige and symbolic significance of the Khakas language. The language shift, visible in its statistical dynamics, calls for urgent tasks associated with the need for conceptual and practical adjustments to efforts to stop the shift, based on the diversity of native speakers and inadequate presence of Khakas in the social area of the region. The study points out an obvious need to involve more language policy entities in the discussion of the prospects of vitality of the Khakas language and adjust the state program for the preservation and development of the language in 2022-2029.

The article is devoted to one of the aspects of the cognitive part of reconstruction of the human image in the Khanty language. The key task was to identify a mental image of a Khanty person and an adequate description of this person in a text. This task required studying the linguistic means in two aspects: paradigmatic (or static) and syntagmatic (or dynamic). After defining the key concept (Khanty = fisherman), the author conducted a search for keywords defining a person rooted in the native land. Based on the dialectological dictionaries of the Khanty language, the author compiled a list of these definitions, including six lexical units, as well as a list of lexical-semantic variants for defining and evaluating a person. The study concluded that the structural and semantic features of these units, embedded in the dictionary as potential, are fully manifested in a text, contributing to the complete realization (verbalization) of the concept. The textual analysis is based on the story of the founder of Khanty literature, Grigory Lazarev, "Sorneng tov" ("The Golden Horse"). The story describes life in a small fishermen’s village; the main characters are three generations of one family: an old fisherman, his son and grandson. Careful reading allows identification of means employed by the author to develop the characters as fully as possible. It is clear that the author, Lazarev, strives to describe the characters extremely accurately. He succeeds, especially with the direct speech of the characters. The words and phrases that describe and evaluate a person are also found in the story’s narrative and descriptive fragments. There are also commonplace phrases and expressions that are not typical of the Khanty language. This is explained by the imperfection of the Khanty language in its written form (insufficient development of the Khanty literary language).

The article presents some of the results of the completed scientific project "Comprehensive Sociolinguistic and Grammatical Study of the Russian Setos’ Idiom". The author of the project made a number of expeditions to the Pechora district of the Pskov region, to the indigenous Seto territory, and to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the Seto people moved at the turn of the 20th century. The project aimed to obtain a complete synchronous grammatical description of essentially two idioms: Pechora and Krasnoyarsk Seto, and collect comprehensive information about the modern functioning of the two idioms. For the first time, the idioms of the Krasnoyarsk Seto were the subject of both linguistic description and sociolinguistic study.The article deals with the ethnic identity and ethnonyms of the Seto people, the preservation of their cultural traditions and customs; it provides certain sociolinguistic information obtained in a field sociolinguistic survey. Some features of the Seto language that differ from closely related languages are included in the article, as well as the linguistic differences between the two idioms.

Representatives of two indigenous ethnic minorities, Baraba Tatars and Chat Tatars, live in the Novosibirsk Region. Their languages and culture are endangered for a number of extralinguistic reasons: disruption of their compact residence; interrupted passing of the language and traditions from generation to generation; labor migration; globalization. Whereas 20–25 years ago children spoke their native idiom, now there are either no young speakers or very few. The language is limited to the domestic use; there is no written tradition. The related Turkic languages, Kumandin and Teleut, are in a similar condition. However, a written form has been developed or is being developed for the two languages. The situation among the Mennonite Germans of Siberia is slightly better, but the general trends in language development are the same as among the indigenous peoples. The project included the development of a database of dialogical speech of Baraba Tatars, Chat Tatars, Kumandins, Teleuts and Mennonite Germans that provides audio records of dialogs of native speakers with different communicative focus (both full-length or separate phrases). In addition to studying the intonation of dialogical speech, the project author is developing spelling rules (all texts are transcribed in the original language and translated into Russian). Individual phrases have phonemic marks, which allow performing intonation analysis semi-automatically. Modern technologies enable researchers to introduce into scientific circulation and provide access to the recorded 
speech of ethnic minorities, which surely contributes to the preservation of endangered idioms.

Russian has been spoken on the North American continent since the middle of the 18th century, when Russia began active trade and fishing, gradually moving eastward along the islands of the Aleutian Ridge to the Alaska peninsula. At first, Russian voyages for marine and fur-bearing animals were irregular, the main idea of industrialists was to gain profit from the resources of New Land. They treated the indigenous people rather harsh, exploiting their hunting and fishing skills. Decades passed before the most ideologically thinking and visionary Russians came up with the idea that they could be hosts here, not guests. Together, they crea ted the Russian-American Company (RAK) in 1799, which solely ruled Alaska until it was ceded to the United States of America. Having left its only overseas colony in 1867, Russia left behind one important thing: the Russian language, which, resulting from contacts with the languages of indigenous peoples, formed a special Russian variety that has survived to date, as well as the Russian Orthodox tradition, followed by many residents of many Alaskan territories. The research is devoted to the preservation of the ethnic and linguistic identity of the descendants of the Russian colonists. It is based on a corpus of sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews (1980s — 2020s) with residents of areas with a strong Russian presence, supported by archival records. Adhering to the approaches of linguistic and historical anthropology, the author uses both universal scientific methods and special methods of historical research determined by the unique nature of the problem: chronological problem method, comparative analysis method, systematic method, and content analysis.