When your language is disappearing: Canadian Doukhobor Russian

This article considers Russian language attitudes of Canadian Doukhobors, a religious and ethnic minority group of Russian origin who immigrated to Canada in 1899. The significance of the study is determined by a paucity of research devoted to this unique cultural and linguistic group as well as by an urgency of protocolling the language loss. In particular, language attitudes held by the Doukhobors have never been investigated before. The aim of the study is to describe the attitudes of the Doukhobor participants to their heritage language (Russian). The goals are to outline the remaining functions of the language in the community, and the perspectives for its maintenance. The materials include interviews with 40 speakers of Doukhobor Russian who are bilingual in English and Doukhobor Russian. The interviews were recorded in British Columbia and Saskatchewan (the historic settlements of the Doukhobors) between 2012 and 2018. The methods rooted in heritage language and sociolinguistic studies involve manual thematic coding of the interview transcripts and their discourse analysis. The results demonstrate that the speakers are emotionally connected to the Russian language, and that the language is important for Doukhobor prayer services, understanding of their beliefs expressed in Russian psalms, reading Russian literature, travelling to or studying in Russia, etc. At the same time some participants talk about their language as being inferior to Standard Russian, because of anti-dialectal reactions of Russian citizens that they came in contact with. Many Doukhobor participants are skeptical about the possibility of maintaining the Russian language in the group. The results are interpreted in the light of the author’s Linguistic Equilibrium theory. In conclusion, the article outlines implications for the heritage language revitalization. The results can contribute to bi/multilingualism theory, heritage language and language loss studies.