MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES IN THE LOWER YENISEI AREA: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE PAST
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2019-1-9-28
The paper analyzes indigenous multilingualism in the north-eastern part of the lower Yenisei area from the 1930s to the 1970s (Tajmyr peninsula, Siberia, Russia). The data used for this study are sociolinguistic interviews performed by the author in 2017 with children and grandchildren of those representatives of indigenous peoples of Tajmyr who were adults in the given period. Ethnolinguistic history of the area is described for the last 200 years in order to provide a general background for understanding patterns of multilingual practices, in particular all ethnic migrations are analyzed from the point of view of their reasons and their sociolinguistic consequences. Contacts between Northern Samoyedic peoples – the Tundra Enets, the Tundra Nenets, and the Nganasans – are portrayed in details, with particular attention to language repertoires, to contexts of usage of each language, and to all attested changes to them with time. Besides, linguistic ideologies typical for the area are commented on, including their interconnection to other sociolinguistic factors involved. As a result, common local sociolinguistic patterns are posited: those that are recurrently attested in several Tajmyrian locations. First, in all cases all adults could speak the language of the ethnic majority of the area, and most adults could understand all other indigenous languages of the area; furthermore, active command of other languages could be conditioned by details of an individual’s biography. Second, the main language used within a nuclear family was usually the language of the ethnic majority of the area, regardless the ethnic identity of the parents; the native language of (one of) the parents, if different from the language of the ethnic majority, was usually used for codified interactions with other adults: e.g. when receiving guests or paying visits. The methodology of this study is discussed in details with the idea of its reproducibility in other areas of Siberia.
Keywords: sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, history of Siberia, multilingualism, language contacts, Tajmyr, Tundra Enets, Tundra Nenets, Nganasans, methodology of fieldwork
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Issue: 1, 2019
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 9 — 28
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