Language Ideologies and Multilingual Practices of Post-Soviet Migrants in Western Europe from a Translanguaging Perspective (original) (raw)

Language Ideologies and Multilingual Practices of Post-Soviet Migrants in Western Europe from a Translanguaging Perspective

Erzhen Khilkhanova
Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Abstract

The main point of this paper is to describe, discuss and analyse multilingual practices of non-Russian migrants from the former Soviet Union from a translanguaging perspective uncovering language ideologies underpinning these practices. Using data collected through a 3-month linguistic ethnography supplemented by linguistic analysis of informal online communication, the Author found that fluid, translingual practices are generally not characteristic for the majority of well-educated post-Soviet migrants. Instead, we observe in the normative linguistic behaviour a lack of need or unwillingness to cross language boundaries and create hybrid linguistic forms.

Keywords Language ideologies. Multilingualism. Post-Soviet migrants. Non-Russian migrants. Translanguaging. Code switching. Code mixing. Social network groups. Western Europe.

Summary 1 Introduction. - 2 Theoretical Framework: Concepts of Translanguaging, Code Switching and Language Ideologies. - 3 Methodological Considerations. 4 Translanguaging Practices of Post-Soviet Non-Russian Migrants. - 5 Language Ideologies at Work. -6 Results and Discussion.

1 Introduction

Although migration from both pre- and post-Soviet Russia is polyethnic, this aspect has been of interest to researchers mainly in relation to three groups: ‘Russian Germans’, ‘Russian (Soviet) Jews’ and ethnic Russians (see, e.g., Ben-Rafael et. al. 2006; Isurin 2011; Dietz 2000). Representatives of other ethnic groups were usually considered as an integral part of the undifferentiated mass of ‘Russian’ emigration, which in the ordinary sense means not only citizens of Russia, but also all immigrants from the former Soviet Union in general (hereinafter FSU). 1{ }^{1} Non-Russian ethnic groups from this region, especially in the post-Soviet period, mainly attracted scholarly interests of cultural anthropologists, ethnologists and sociologists. Although their research touched upon language issues as well (see, for example, Guchinova 2004), linguistic works concerning ethnic (minority) 2{ }^{2} languages of Russia in the migration context are scarce, compared to the countless literature on the Russian in migration (see e.g. Anstatt 2012; Besters-Dilger 2013; Glovinskaya 2004; Zemskaya 2001). These few linguistic and sociolinguistic works on non-Russian languages and migration address topics of language and identity (Yusupova, Nabiullina 2016; Bedretdin 2017; Khilkhanova 2017), structural and functional features of Tatar and other languages in foreign diasporas (Akhmetova 2004; Nabiullina, Yusupova 2015; Khilkhanova 2020; Bitkeeva 2018), mechanisms and consequences of language contacts with host country languages, e.g. Chinese and English (Nabiullina, Yusupova 2014; Yusupova et. al. 2013; Aliev 2017).

The Author thanks many people and organisations who contributed to this research. First, the project could not be done without the cooperation of migrants from Russia and Kazakhstan. Though I cannot name them here I nevertheless would like to thank all the anonymous informants who shared their life stories and sincerely answered my questions.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Günther Schlee and the staff and researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale).

Last but not least, I owe my deep thanks to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that provided financial support for this project. The reported study was also funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), project number no. 21-512-12002 HHRO Prognostic Methods and Future Scenarios in Language Policy - Multilingual Russia as an Example.
1 The shortcoming of the definition of ‘Russian’ is also due to the fact that most Western European languages do not have the differentiation between the concepts of rossijskij and russkij appeared during the perestroika, where the first denotes citizenship, and the second means ethnicity (along with the term ethnicity in the Russian scientific tradition, the term nationality is often used).
2 In the Soviet and especially in the Russian context, all non-Russian languages fall under the definition of ‘minority languages’ related to the languages of those ethnic groups that represent a demographic minority in the country, and languages whose functions and scope of use are limited compared to the official language of this region (in this case, Russian).

I am interested in another linguistic aspect of post-Soviet migration, that is how language ideologies manifest themselves in the multilingual strategies and practices of the multiethnic body of migrants from the FSU, regulating their language attitudes and language practices. This problem is studied in this article in connection with the concept of translanguaging, which is becoming increasingly popular in modern studies of multilingualism, language contacts and migration. Translanguaging means “the ability of multilingual speakers to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system” (Canagarajah 2011, 401).

This problem statement stems from my observations made during a field study conducted in 2016 within the framework of a project Language and Ethnic Identity of Non-Russian Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Western Europe. The aim of the project was to examine processes of negotiation, (re)construction and transformation of ethnic identity and its connection with language and culture among non-Russian migrants from the FSU. This multiethnic body of immigrants shared some common characteristics that were essential for my research aim and made them an interesting and little-studied research object: they were united by a common history, (Soviet) culture and (Russian) language, but at the same time represented other ethnicities and cultures. From the linguistic point of view, each ethnic group was multilingual and had at least three languages in their linguistic repertoire: the ethnic language (L1) (sometimes only at a symbolic level), the Russian language (L2) and the host country language/languages (L3-n).

The project aim did not include the study of translanguaging, but during the interview and participant observation I noticed a very limited use of the migrants’ multilingual repertoire, lack of language creativity and switching between languages - what is usually defined as translanguaging. This fact was particularly striking against the background of quite frequent translanguaging strategies and practices of migrants in different regions of the world (Lee 2014; Li 2018; Pennycook 2008). I assume that this is due to language ideologies acquired in childhood that continue to guide (to a certain extent) the speech behaviour of migrants whose acculturation took place in the FSU. Therefore, the goal of this article is to examine multilingual practices of first-generation migrants from the FSU from a translanguaging perspective aiming to reveal and analyse translingual resources (or their absence) used by this multilingual and multicultural group and to uncover language ideologies underpinning these practices.

This research falls within the frame of critical ethnographic sociolinguistics. At the beginning of the article, the theoretical framework of this study is considered, namely concepts of translanguaging, code switching and language ideologies (paragraph 2). Then, I will

provide methodological considerations related to the characteristics of the social research object and research materials (paragraph 3). I will then examine translingual practices of post-Soviet migrants in their oral speech and informal written communication in social networks (paragraph 4). The next section is devoted to the description and analysis of several language ideologies in the historical context of the Soviet language policy and in the modern context of migrants’ life in Western Europe. Finally, the summary of the results of this research is provided and conclusions are drawn.

2 Theoretical Framework: Concepts of Translanguaging, Code Switching and Language Ideologies

Language ideologies are the systems of ideas about social and linguistic relationships and how they relate to social values (Woolard 2003; Kroskrity 2000, 5). They have an affective dimension and are related to what Cavanaugh calls a “social aesthetics of language” (2009, 194-5). They are also defined as “the cultural conceptions of the nature, form, and purpose of language, and of communicative behavior as an enactment of the collective order” (Gal, Woolard 1995, 30).

Sociolinguists distinguish many ideologies related to the use or non-use of ethnic, or minority languages. These include folklorisation, hypertraditionalisation, and the association of the language only with the past and old times (Sallabank, Marquis 2018; Woolard 2020). Many ideologies revolve around the concepts of legitimacy, ‘language ownership’, and authenticity usually going hand in hand with language purism (Pischlöger 2016). In real life, these ideologies are intertwined with each other and their action is carried out in a complex way; often contradictory ideologies coexist in the minds of the same people.

In the context of my research, it is important to identify and show how language ideologies can act as an internal regulator of people’s linguistic behaviour. Language ideologies are also closely related to translanguaging, since they are the source of linguistic variability and the driving force for the creation of new hybrid ‘languages’ by people who are on the border of two or more ‘worlds’. This is why translingual strategies are so common in the migration environment. Migrants invent a new language to reflect their inner reality determined by their migration experience and destabilised identities (Hüppauf 2004).

The theory of translanguaging, which originates within the framework of pedagogy, has long gone beyond its framework and is actively used in modern studies of multilingualism and language contacts. Today, linguists are already saying that it is necessary to distinguish

between the pedagogical use of translanguaging and spontaneous translanguaging, the latter referring to the complex discursive practices of bilinguals (see García 2009). In addition to the well-known definition by Canagarajah given above, translanguaging is also defined as a smooth synergetic transition from one linguistic culture to another, as a result of which there is some merging of them, while there is no complete assimilation and the linguistic and cultural identity of language users is preserved, and a mixed discourse is created (Canagarajah 2002). Translanguaging implies the permeability of languages, their mutual influence, as a result of which a new quality of an enriched linguistic culture arises. The translingual area is characterised by blurriness, indistinctness, uncertainty, “linguistic fluidity” (Lee 2014). In language studies and in language pedagogy, the translingual approach focuses not on language as a system, but on language as a practice, i.e. activity (Lee 2014, 305).

It should be emphasised that translanguaging is the use of a speaker’s entire communicative repertoire, as a result of which languages and cultures smoothly flow into each other, sometimes helping, and sometimes hindering (Pennycook 2008). Code switching and code mixing are considered one of the translingual strategies (Pennycook 2008, 30.4), or as an instance of translanguaging, alongside other bilingual phenomena such as translation, borrowing, and additional processes, in a range of modalities (MacSwan 2017, 191).

Thus, translanguaging is, firstly, a broader phenomenon including code switching (hereafter CS) and code mixing (hereafter CM). 3{ }^{3} Secondly, the more fundamental difference between them is the paradigmatic difference. The translanguaging concept belongs to the postcolonial paradigm (see Pennycook 2006), while the notions of CS and CM appeared in earlier studies of multilingualism and language contacts. This causes a difference in approaches: the terms CS and CM are based on the vision of languages as separate systems. Accordingly, speech, where there is a mixing and switching of codes, was often assessed rather as defective speech, since the reasons for these phenomena were seen in the speaker’s insufficient linguistic competence in any of the languages involved, or even in both. This is the basis for the designations of such mixed speech as “macaronic” (Bert-

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1. 3 The term code switching is used here as a term with a broader meaning, which includes codes mixing (see also Myers-Scotton 1993, 1; Gumperz 1982, 59). The preference for the term code switching is also due to considerations of brevity and convenience. At the same time, I understand by code mixing the process of using two (or more) codes (languages) in speech, which has acquired a more or less regular form and has gone further than just code switching. But the most important differentiating criterion is grammatical: if the morphosyntactic rules of both languages are not violated, this is code switching. If the lexemes acquire morphological indicators of another language, this is codes mixing. In other words, as long as the morphosyntactic basis of a particular code is preserved, we can talk about CS. If not, about CM. ↩︎

agaev 1969, 127), “mestizo language”: in relation to the FSU, these characteristics were often used to describe speech, where Russian and other languages of the peoples of the USSR were mixed. A puristic, normative approach to language is clearly seen behind these epithets. The translanguaging approach is fundamentally different and positive. Translanguaging
has a pronounced active and lingvocreative character, representing a new, creative, transformative and integrative use of all bilingual resources. Additional opportunities for the lingvocreative activity of bilinguals arise precisely in the ‘indefinite zone’ on the border of languages. (Proshina 2017, 161; see also MacSwan 2017, 190)

Since the main difference lies precisely in the approach, in the assessment of translanguaging and CS phenomena, I believe that a researcher can, however, work with the terminological apparatus traditionally used in CS research, as it is done, for example, in research by Karpava et al. 2019. Otherwise, the scholars remain both without a terminological apparatus, and, as J. MacSwan rightly notes, without empirical case and are left only with an ideological one that denies languages as social and political constructs (MacSwan 2017, 169, 177). I generally support MacSwan’s multilingual perspective on translanguaging, which acknowledges the existence of discrete languages and multilingualism reconciling educational (that is, translanguaging) and linguistic research. The reconciliation becomes possible through distinguishing mental grammars from linguistic repertoires, arguing that bilinguals, like monolinguals, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar (MacSwan 2017, 167).

Since, speaking of translanguaging, we talk primarily about individual bi- and multilingualism, 4{ }^{4} a look at what motivates people to switch and mix codes sheds additional light on the mechanism of translanguaging. Factors that contribute to the dynamic use of two or multiple languages in a particular instance can be broadly divided into three groups - external, internal, and linguistic:

1. external factors, i.e. independent of a speaker (such as history, politics or demography);
2. internal factors, i.e. attached to a speaker, both as an individual and as a group member (such as psycholinguistic, pragmatic, sense of ethnic identity);

4 Although, as J. MacSwan rightly notes, a language is the product of a community of speakers, a collection of overlapping individual languages (MacSwan 2017, 174).

1. linguistic factors (such as lack of a concept in a minority lan-guage-L1, insufficient linguistic competence of speakers in L1).

Although all the factors are intertwined and act in a complex way in a real language contact situation, translanguaging and CS from the point of view of this scheme are motivated primarily by internal factors. External or linguistic factors also contribute to “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds” (García (2009, 45), but in a more indirect way. In some way, only unconscious or, vice versa, conscious, purposeful cases of CS driven from within can be considered truly translingual strategies. The first ones are valuable for sociolinguistics because ‘automatic’ CSs, when a speaker would like to, but cannot speak without switching the code, or when a mixed code has become a kind of norm for the speaker (or for the entire language community) are the true indicators of real processes occurring in the contacting languages. Automatic ‘slips of the tongue’ in another language can be caused by such psycholinguistic factors as (i) insufficient linguistic competence in L1 combined with higher linguistic competence in a majority language (L2); (ii) the habit of speaking one of the languages from the bilingual repertoire (a stereotype of speaking behaviour); (iii) linguistic economy, or economy of speaking efforts.

Vice versa, a deliberate, goal-oriented CS discovers various speakers’ intentions: for instance, the translingual strategy of mixing languages can be chosen consciously - as a special slang - to construct one’s group identity, which also includes ethnicity (Moustaoui, Prego, Zas 2019). Vivid examples of ‘protest’ motivation can be found in translingual/transcultural literature created by bi- or polylingual writers. This is, for instance, the book by the German-Turkish author Feridun Zaimogly Kanak Sprak. The book’s language is the language of protest, violence, obscenity, ‘dirty’ metaphors and slang, but it is also some kind of artificial language containing words and expressions that are not present in either German or Turkish (Yildiz 2004). Similarly developed and used is the pidginised German of ‘Russian Germans’ called ‘kvelya’ and ‘legitimised’ by Vladimir Kaminer’s book Russendisko (Kaminer 2000; Kirilina 2011). My research, however, focuses not on professional creative writing ‘at the crossroads of cultures’ but on ‘ordinary’ multilingual migrant speakers and their translanguaging practices through which they represent their experiences and relationships in their new localities.

As already mentioned, translanguaging is an integral feature of increasing migration flows in the modern world. In the sociolinguistic literature, quite well studied are the ‘big’ languages involved in the translingual process in a migration situation. These are, for example, new transnational forms on the border between German and Turkish languages (Zaimogly 2004), translanguaging practices in the

home among bilingual/multilingual Russian-speaking children and their parents in Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia (Karpava, Ringblom, Zabrodskaja 2019). But the most widespread translingual forms are (for obvious reasons) the so-called World Englishes (including Runglish, Spanglish, Chinglish etc.) (Li 2018; Pennycook 2008). From the point of view of translanguaging theory, these combined variants that have arisen as a result of cultural and linguistic contact and carry the features of both English and other languages (sometimes serving as a means of communication for entire countries) are not defective speech, but specific translingual formations.

With the approaches, definitions and theoretical discussions presented above in mind, let us now turn to the methodological considerations and the description of data collection procedures.

3 Methodological Considerations

The data include a corpus of spoken materials, collected as part of the field research conducted in the period from July to October 2016 in four Western European countries (Germany, France, Netherlands, and Great Britain with the focus on Germany). 5{ }^{5} A total of twenty-six in-depth, semi-structured interviews lasting from one to several hours were collected. The interviews were conducted, recorded and transcribed by the author in person. Apart from the interviews, the data were collected employing extensive ethnographic observation. From an ethnic point of view, the pool of informants included Buryats, Yakuts and Kazakhs from two countries, i.e. Russia (twenty-four people) and Kazakhstan (two people). Of course, there is a bias towards the Russian area, which is explained both by the complexity of data collection among migrants and by a rather short field study duration. Therefore, the conclusions are made mainly on the Russian material, although the commonality of background and linguistic strategies of post-Soviet migrants are very much alike, as evidenced in other studies on post-Soviet migration (Kasatkina 2011). Interviews typically lasted one to two, sometimes more hours, and were usually held in public venues, such as restaurants, local businesses, and private homes.

The diagrams below [figs 1-2] show two important characteristics of the sample: age and the fields of professional activity/status of informants. I divided the study participants into four age groups, and

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1. 5 All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. Transcripts are fully anonymised, with each participant being ascribed a pseudonym. Any information that could reveal the informants’ identity such as names of localities, places of study etc. is removed from the published interview fragments. Information about the countries of residence is, however, retained, since it is impossible to determine the participants’ identity from it, and yet this is important for analysis. ↩︎

Figure 1 Age characteristics of informants
Figure 2 Professional characteristics/status of informants
we can see that the most numerous (almost half of the respondents) was the group of migrants, whose ages ranged from 26 to 35 years.

The informants’ educational level and social status are reflected in their fields of activity [Fig. 2]. Note that almost all participants worked or studied, except for three who were housewives at that time. Figure 2 shows that the majority of respondents work in the field of education and science ( 32%32 \% ) or are college students ( 23%23 \% ), mainly enrolled in master programmes.

The interview toolkit consisted of (1) questions identifying the respondents’ social characteristics (age, sex, marital status, number of years spent in Western European countries, information on education both in the home country and the host countries, professional background, migration status as well as reports on the ethnic self-identification of the participants), (2) questions aimed at identifying the interaction of language, culture and ethnic identity, (3) questions that solicited participants’ reports on their language proficiency in Russian, ethnic language and L3-n, and the use of these languages in the migration context. In addition, attention was paid to the social communication circle of post-Soviet migrants, i.e. social networks. An important goal was to find out how social networks (connections) of migrants affect their language practices and, vice versa, what this case adds to the already known models of interaction between the structure of social networks and the use of languages in migrant communities. Therefore, a part of the interview questionnaire focused specifically on eliciting information on participants’ networks and the links between the personal social networks and language use.

Since the original purpose of the study was not related to translanguaging, I drew attention to the almost complete absence of a dynamic and functionally integrated use of different languages in the participants’ speech later. Therefore, for a deeper study of this topic I decided to study samples of spontaneous speech, since it is in spontaneous speech that the creativity of multilingual speakers can manifest itself to the fullest (see also García 2009). Interviews, despite being held in a relaxed atmosphere and being close to a natural conversation, cannot by definition represent completely free speaking. Therefore, the field research materials were subsequently supplemented with data obtained from the analysis of virtual social communities of several migrant groups from post-Soviet Russia. Social media such as Facebook are a popular object of research on translingual practices (Halim, Maros 2014), because they represent
a new, delocalized, multimodal space positioned on the boundary between orality and literacy in which translingual practices emerge spontaneously. (Moustaoui, Prego, Zas 2019, 3)

This method called ‘virtual ethnography’ was carried out on posts and informal discussions in social network groups of Russian-speaking migrants of non-Russian ethnicity residing in different western countries.

So, generally this study is based on a variety of methods to obtain and analyse empirical data, namely interviews and participant observations as central ones, in conjunction with a virtual ethnography of online interactions of Buryat, Yakut and Kalmyk migrants living in western countries and the sociolinguistic analysis of online social

media. Six social network groups in Facebook and Instagram became the object of my study. In total, I analysed the written speech practices of the following online communities: Kalmyks in USA / Kalmyki v SShA, which included 3,000 members at the time of writing this part of the article (June 2021), sakhadiaspora.official in Instagram with 2,695 subscribers and Sakha Diaspora community organisation in Facebook (171 followers), and three Buryat groups in Facebook (Vstrechi v Evrope; Buryat House, USA; and Buryat connection UK with total 1,600 members). All social media were viewed in the period from 2016 to June 2021, with the exception of the Sakha Diaspora Facebook page, which was created on December 11, 2020.

Using virtual ethnography poses additional ethical considerations, although most Internet communication is considered public due to its free availability. Like in other studies employing data from social media (Kliuchnikova 2016, 71), my approach was also to avoid using any material that could not be accessed freely, without the special permission of the author. Nevertheless, I still do not provide the full (nick)names of the writers I quote. Only the initials, names of the participant’s group and the dates of publications are indicated.

For the comparative analysis of modern data with historically earlier information about the speech practices of non-Russian migrants from the Soviet Union, the paper employs secondary sources, i.e. interviews with Oirat-Kalmyks living in the United States. The interviews were published in the book by E. Guchinova who studied the history and ethnicity of the Kalmyk community in the USA in 199798 (Guchinova 2004).

It should be noted that the pool of informants is limited by two important and related characteristics: the high level of education of the studied migrants and the legality of migration channels. Almost all interviewed informants had a higher education ( 24 people), seven of them possessed PhD and Candidate of Sciences degree, and two people have finished professional (vocational) schools. The high level of education reflects the general picture of post-Soviet migration, which is closely related to the problem of ‘brain drain’ from Russia. For example, in the United States the 2000 census recorded a very high level of education among the Russians who arrived: more than half of those over 25 years old ( 52%52 \% ) had a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Only one in four Americans had an equivalent level of education (24%) (Denisenko 2013). In the early 2000s, 43% of Russian migrants in OECD countries aged 15 years and over had higher education. For immigrants from most other countries, including the OECD, this indicator was lower (Dumont, Lemaître 2005).

Thus, the studied group represents a certain segment in the general emigration flow from FSU countries - namely intellectual migration. Currently, the concept of ‘intellectual migration’ mainly describes the processes of departure of scientists and qualified per-

sonnel to work outside their country. But there is no single meaningful definition of the phenomenon of intellectual migration in the scientific discourse. The broadest interpretation implies that intellectual migrants are all professionally qualified persons who have been abroad for more than one year (Ledeneva 2014, 107). This broad interpretation of intellectual migration is adopted in this paper. Accordingly, the characteristics and behavioural strategies of Buryat, Kazakh and Yakut migrants are determined by belonging to this category of migrants and, most likely, cannot be extrapolated to other groups, for example, unskilled migrants or illegal labour migration.

The next limitation was due to my ignorance of the Kazakh and Yakut languages, which also excluded the possibility of Kazakh-Russian and Yakut-Russian CS and CM. However, considering that there were 22 Buryat migrants among the Russian participants, the possibility of communicative practice that “blurs or breaks through apparent boundaries” (Blackledge, Creese 2016, 2) between Russian and Buryat remained open but was rarely noticed by the researcher during ethnographic observation and interviews. It should be noted that the possibility of translingual transitions between Buryat and Russian was initially excluded for seven Buryat informants who did not know the Buryat language (there were no such people among the Yakut and Kazakh informants). Despite my attempts to conduct a conversation in the Buryat language with Buryat informants, most of them could not maintain a lengthy conversation in it. As one of the participants put it, “I’m not as good [in Buryat] as you are” (Vlada, 32, Germany). So, the main language of the interview and communication beyond it was Russian.

In addition, all informants had a good (in many cases native-like) command in at least one foreign language, primarily English, but also German, French etc. They knew that the interviewer was also fluent in English and German, so they had a full opportunity to dynamically use at least these languages along Russian. However, despite their multilingual past and present, the speakers remained mostly within the monolingual Russian discourse, although the cases of translanguaging were also present. They are discussed in the following section.

4 Translanguaging Practices of Post-Soviet Non-Russian Migrants

In this section, I consider translingual transitions and creative, playful usage (or the lack thereof) of languages by migrants in oral speech (recorded during interviews and ethnographic observation) and informal written communication in social networks. The data obtained contain not so many examples when the speakers collaboratively engage in fluid, plurilingual communication practices.

The recorded cases of translanguaging were mostly insertions of single lexemes (sometimes longer speech segments) from L1 and L3-n into the predominantly Russian discourse. I interpret insertions as incidental cases of CS (see also Myers-Scotton 1993, 163). The identified CSs can be grouped into the following categories:

1. non-equivalence vocabulary (when describing cultural-specific realities) or words for which the speaker could not immediately find a translation equivalent or did not want to spend speaking efforts on it: 6{ }^{6}

А самое-то интересное было, что дети иногда приезжали, и заходили вот так за порог, да, и мы, значит, с ними здороваемся, я в бурятском всегда была, буряад дэгэлтэй. гутал, малгагай ху умдвд. (Densema, 56, Germany) And the most interesting thing was that children sometimes came, and went like this over the threshold, yes, and we, then, say hello to them, I was always in Buryat, in the Buryat clothes, shoes, cap and all on.

ALYONA Я учүсь сейчас на Arzthelferin
INTERVIEWER Но это не bachelor’s?
ALYONA Нет. Просто Ausbildung. Среднее (Alyona, 24, Germany)
ALYONA I am currently studying to become medical assistant.
INTERVIEWER But it’s not bachelor’s?
ALYONA No. Just training. Vocational’.

Mendid Kalmyks! In celebration of the year of the Gaha, there will be a Tsagan Dance next month in Philly. ALL PROCEEDS WILL BENEFIT THE PHILLY HURUL! (Facebook, Kalmyks in USA / Калмыки в США, Т., 6 January 2019)
Hello Kalmyks! In celebration of the Pig year, there will be a White Dance next month in Philly.
ALL PROCEEDS WILL BENEFIT THE PHILLY TEMPLE!
2. Clichéd etiquette formulas (for example, greetings):

Они заходят, я говорю: “Сайн байна! Зэ орогты даа, дээшэ гарагты”, и потом на русском. Так дети ни бурятского, ни русского не знают!
(Densema, 56, Germany)
They come in, I say: “Hello! Well, come in, come right in”, and then in Russian. So the children do not know neither Buryat nor Russian!

Хальмгуд, мендут! кто в США, добавляйтесь! Давайте общаться (Facebook, Kalmyks in USA / Калмыки в США, А., 20 March 2019) Kalmyks, hello! Who is in the USA, please add! Let’s communicate’

6 Transcripts’ legend: italics for ethnic language (L1); standard font for Russian language (L2); underlined for English, German (L3-n); bold for mixed translingual forms. Examples from social networks are given completely in the authors’ design. I only removed non-verbal symbols (such as emoticons) as uninformative in the context of this study.

3. Quotation:

… и я вдруг где-то там в шкафу нашла стихотворение “шинии нюдэн хара мойһон шэнги…” (Densema, 56, Germany)
… and I suddenly found a poem “your eyes are like black currants” somewhere in the closet…

Они говорят: Sie sind doch hier geboren, т.е. они себя чувствуют себя как дома. (Sara, 25, Netherlands)
They say: “They are born here”, that is, they feel at home’.

4. Communication topic:

Могу буряадар дуугарха (Radzana, 48, Germany)
‘I can speak Buryat’

Ухата эк-эцкнр! Даже в американской реальности надо попытаться сделать маленький шаг навстречу калмыцкому языку!
(Facebook, Kalmyks in USA / Калмыки в США, D., 14 August 2020)
Smart moms and dads! Even in the American reality, it is necessary to try to take a small step towards the Kalmyk language!

5. Externally unmotivated intersentential CSs:

И там я два года в школу ходила, тиихэдэ һургуулимнэ буряад байга хаим. (Densema, 56, Germany)
‘And there I went to school for two years, at that time the school was Buryat’

Слушайте до конца. Сертн, серцхәтн хальмгудм. Просыпайтесь, пробуждайтесь калмыки!’ (Facebook, Kalmyks in USA / Калмыки в США, E., 11 December 2020)
‘Listen to the end. Wake up, wake up Kalmyks. Wake up, wake up Kalmyks!’

6. Externally unmotivated intrasentential CSs:

Тут можешь сесть в ресторан рандомно и у тебя за соседним столом будут сидеть русские, в пабе будут русские, т.е. чувствовать homesick - нету здесь. (Kira, 28, Great Britain)
‘Here you can sit in a restaurant randomly and you will have Russians at the next table. There will be Russians in the pub, that is, to feel homesick - there is no such thing here’

Минус в том что постоянно prejudice. Постоянно misunderstanding, все дела. (Sara, 25, Netherlands)
‘The disadvantage is that there is always prejudice. Constantly misunderstanding, all that stuff’

7 Here the translation from Kalmyk into Russian is given by the author of this post.

Какие desired outcomes? (Dari, 32, Switzerland)
‘What are desired outcomes?’

Не то чтобы она [английская культура] так ярко выражена, она довольно plain по сравнению с другими культурами. (Dari, 32, Switzerland)
‘It’s not that it [English culture] is so pronounced, it’s quite plain compared to other cultures’

Есть предложение, скинуться по £15£ 15 с каждого взрослого и накрыть самим стол, а самое главное налепить as much as we want наши БУУЗЫ. (Facebook, Buryat connection UK, D., 23 February 2017)
‘There is an offer to chip in £15£ 15 from each adult and cover the table ourselves, and most importantly, to make as much as we want our BUUZAS’.
7. Language creativity, language game:

А ты хамагунст? :) (Facebook, Buryat connection UK, B., 12 October 2020)
Are you a khamaguist (‘don’t-care-at-all loafer’)?
8. Discourse markers:

И вот сейчас, смотря, да, обратно, аlso те два года которые я в [mentions the name of the village] провела, были самыми тяжелыми в моей жизни. (‘Radzana, 48, Germany’)
‘And now, looking back, yes, well those two years that I spent in [mentions the name of the village] were the hardest in my life’

When looking at these CS examples, we see that they occur under the influence of external, internal and linguistic factors, which were discussed in section 2. Quotations and communication topic (examples 3 and 4) are well-known and frequent linguistic factors of CS (see, e.g., Gumperz 1982). Similarly, a person has to resort to the resources of another language while referring to the realities of the corresponding culture and using clichéd etiquette formulas, as in examples 1 and 2 (for more detail, see Khilkhanova 2009). As J. Fishman explained it,

That language which has traditionally been linked with a given ethnoculture is, at any time during which that linkage is still intact, best able to name the artefacts and to formulate or express the interests, values and world-views of that culture. (Fishman 1991, 20)

However, as stated in section 2, primarily unmotivated, unconscious (examples 5,6,85,6,8 ) or, on the contrary, conscious, purposeful CSs (example 7) can be considered truly translingual strategies. For instance, in example 7 the popular Buryat expression “khama ugy” (‘all the same, no care, no difference’) is played with. The addition of the productive Russian suffix -ist creates an occasionalism with the meaning

‘a person who doesn’t care’ (in Russian there is a similar slang equivalent, pofigist, formed according to the same model from the non-literary word pofig). The morphosyntactic basis of the phrase “Are you a khamaguist?” is provided by the Russian language, serving here as a matrix language (Myers-Scotton 1993). In the examples of intrasentential switching, we see that the speakers use different strategies, sometimes mixing, sometimes switching codes. Among the insertions, forms without matrix language affixes are quite frequent - the so-called bare forms (Myers-Scotton 2006): чувствовать (homesick); постоянно (prejudice); постоянно (misunderstanding); она довольно (plain). The frequent use of bare forms is noteworthy, because they do not violate the grammar of CS. Other cases, such as the word ‘randomly’, where the English root morpheme is supplied with the affix of the matrix language - the Russian adverbial suffix -o - are very rare.

The example with a German discursive marker ‘also’ deserves a separate comment. Discursive markers (hereinafter - DM) in general and in bilingual speech in particular are a separate topic that I can only touch on briefly here. As a rule, DMs perform modal, deictic and metalinguistic functions. In this example, we are dealing with the speaker’s automatic choice of the DM ‘also’, which happens when language units are more active in the speaker’s cognitive base due to the more frequent use. In this case, objective, propositional information is expressed in Russian, while subjective, evaluative, additional information is expressed using DM from German. Perhaps this is the first step towards understanding, evaluating, and commenting on reality in another language, i.e. one of the first links in the mechanism of language shift (from Russian to German) by this particular speaker.

It is noteworthy that there are more creative translingual practices and language games in the spontaneous online communication of migrants from the FSU. Nevertheless, the analysis of social networks shows that the language of communication there is mainly Russian, especially in Kalmyk and Buryat social networks. The situation with the Yakut online communication is somewhat different. There are more instances of spontaneous Yakut speech in posts, responses and comments to them, for example:

Скоро День якутских оладушек! Кунду Саха Сирин олохтоокторо, болқойун! Муус устар 7 кунугэр Алгыстаах АЛААДьы кунэ бэлиэтэнэр буолла.
Бу куннэ мааны алаадьыбытын астаан аймахтарбытын, доқотторбутун ыныран амсатабыт, кундулуубут.
Атын группаларга тарқат, билләр.
Готовьте алаадьы #якутскиеоладьи, публикуйте в Инстаграм и не забудьте поставить хэштег #алаадьыкунэ!

The Day of Yakut pancakes is coming soon! Dear Sakha residents, attention! April 7 is the Day of the Blessed Pancakes.

On this day, we fry pancakes and invite and give to try pancakes, we honour our relatives and friends with pancakes.
Report on other groups.
Prepare alaadyi #yakutskieoladyi, post on Instagram and do not forget to put the hashtag #alaadyikune!

The activity of the Yakut online and offline community, related to the relatively good state of the Yakut language, is a well-known fact for Turkologists and sociolinguists. According to comparative statistics on the presence of minority languages of the Russian Federation in the global network (Map of Languages 2016), the Yakut language is best represented online along with Bashkir, Udmurt and Tatar. These are the languages with the greatest linguistic vitality among all minority languages of Russia. This indicates that the Internet does not create a new reality, it only reflects the current situation with multilingualism in the country. Languages that are safe without the Internet, with a high level of language activism and national consciousness of native speakers, are widely used in the global network as well.

One could assume that few cases of translanguaging in interviews between Russian and other languages are due to the fact that the interview is not a suitable place where personal linguistic creativity can be deployed. However, examples of other studies where people easily switch between different languages during interviews refute this assumption. For comparison, here is a fragment from the interview with a Kalmyk emigrant of the second emigration wave 8{ }^{8} taken from the book by E. Guchinova who studied the Kalmyk diaspora in the United States (Guchinova 2004, 168):

Главная разница - то, что те калмыки считают, что under коммунизм бәәсн и some kind тиим анти religion тиим юмта… хотя тенд были divided и были такие которые действительно against религия, но большинство были и сохраняли тер. Тер коммунистический режим далта жилд багад … abolish кечксн - тиигж, саннав. Вот тиим suggestion. И би старался follow эврәнь parents-инь. Я не скажу что был best студент, но average… япад. И эклад, тигад тер мана old generation Әдрхәрәнь йовад суphyльд они были манд real mother. Теднә поведение манд понравилось. Они показали нам knowledge, intelligence и книжкс дуудг, и мне это понравилось. Теднә behaviar маднд influence кепад мы поехали Адрхнер. Конечно, мана уровень knowledge-a ик биш билә, но все же мы могли читать, арифметик… Нас все же приняли в 30-м году в Калмыцкий педагогический техникум.

The main difference is that those Kalmyks believe that being under communism and some kind of such anti-religion such things… although there were divided and there were those who were really against religion, but most were and re-

[1]

1. 8 The second wave of Kalmyk emigration occurred during the period of the construction of socialism, Stalin’s repressions and the Second World War. ↩︎

tained that. That communist regime having existed for seventy years… was abolished - so I think. Here is such suggestion. And I tried to follow my parents-in’. I will not say that I was the best student, but like the average… And to begin, then that our old generation went to study in Astrakhan, they were real mother for us. Their behaviour was liked by us. They showed us knowledge, intelligence and reading books aloud, and I loved it. Their behaviour made influence on us, we went to Astrakhan. Of course, our level of knowledge-a was not high, but still we could read, arithmetic… We were still accepted in the year of 1930 in the Kalmyk Pedagogical College.

This fragment, which is typical in the speech practices of non-Russian migrants of previous waves of the Russian emigration (at least the first and second waves), is an example of a translingual discourse that the author has rarely encountered not only in the migrant environment, but also in Russia. In this fragment, all three languages are almost equally involved: L1 (Kalmyk, in italics), L2 (Russian, standard font) and L3 (in this case, English, underlined). It presents a striking contrast to the speech of post-Soviet migrants (especially well-educated ones), which is an example of ‘pure’, grammatically correct and unmixed Russian speech. Despite the fact that constant bilingualism is often considered to create a specific context that is particularly conducive to developing linguistic creativity (Kellman 2000), speakers remain in a predominantly monolingual Russianspeaking mode both online and offline, even in ‘ethnic’ social networks and when communicating with co-ethnics.

In general, my data confirmed that for first-generation migrants from the FSU the Russian language plays the role of a collective unifier of the immigrant community, and its pragmatic value is similar to that in the USSR. At the same time, the data obtained indicate the heterogeneity of speech practices and language competencies of the studied migrants’ group. For the majority, however, fluid, translingual practices employing the rich repertoire of their multilingual resources are not typical, which is especially noticeable in comparison with the speech of representatives of the previous ‘waves’ of the multilingual and multiethnic part of the Russian emigration. I believe that this is largely due to linguistic ideologies, which will be discussed in the next section.

5 Language Ideologies at Work

Language ideologies, like any mental formations, are difficult to study due to their implicit representation in speech and often hidden character for the speakers themselves. Sometimes they can be identified based on specific statements, sometimes only by analysing speech behaviour regarding the presence or, on the contrary, absence of relevant linguistic phenomena. Addressing language ide-

ologies presents a new turn in my research, that is I empirically arrived at this concept when trying to explain the rarity of translingual speech practices by the studied migrant group. I will begin my analysis with one piece of interview that is indicative in this regard: 9{ }^{9}

INTERVIEWER What about the language?
NORA Buryat? No, [mentions the name of town] is a Russian village anyway. More Russians live and… my parents did not speak Buryat with me. They didn’t want people to make fun of me with my accent. They were ridiculed in Soviet times. Well, I myself no longer… did not try, or something, to learn the language. In principle, if I really wanted to, I could have learned it, but… but when everyone around me speaks Russian […]. But when I came here, I missed it a little, and I’m a little ashamed, because I don’t know it. Because everyone here asks me first of all: do you know your language? When people ask me where I am from, I say: I am from Russia, from Buryatia. Where’s that? I say: well, there … between Lake Baikal and Mongolia. Or they say to me for example: you don’t look like a Russian. I say: well, we live there on the border with Mongolia. Oh, do you speak Mongolian? No, don’t. Well, it’s a little embarrassing, of course. When I moved here, for some reason I wanted to learn Buryat even more than when I was in Buryatia. (Nora, 30, Germany)

This fragment reflects both objective and subjective factors that determined the language situation and speech behaviour of people in the Soviet period through the prism of the migrant’s personal perception. One of the objective factors is demography - by 1989, Russians made up 49.3%49.3 \% of the total population of the Soviet Union (AllUnion Population Census 1989) and 79.8% in the Russian Federation eleven years after the collapse of the USSR (All-Russian Population Census 2002). Subjective factors refer to people’s perception and handling the language inequality in the Soviet Union reflected in Nora’s brief narrative. Traumatic experience and internalized ideological views about the status, hierarchy and pragmatic values of Russian and minority languages resulted in a certain linguistic behaviour, when the older generation did not pass on the ethnic languages to children and encouraged their study of the Russian language. In this way, they wanted to save their children from the negative experience they themselves went through and to ensure their social success. In that way, the ‘monolingual ideology’, i.e. Russian monolingualism, was formed in the mass consciousness of the Soviet people, Russians and non-Russians alike. As A. Burykin put it: "Bilingualism in general is not characteristic of the Russian language mentality. At the level of everyday consciousness, the command and use of other ethnic groups’ languages is not encouraged and not welcomed by carri-

[1]

1. 9 Since there are no cases of translanguaging here, the fragment is given in English translation at once. ↩︎

ers of this mentality" (Burykin 2004a; see also Baranova, Fedorova 2018). This statement is confirmed statistically as well: only 0.6%0.6 \% of ethnic Russians spoke regional languages or the languages of the indigenous peoples of Russia, and the tendency of Russians to remain monolingual continues (Mikhalchenko, Trushkova 2003; Kharitonov, Stepina 2020). Speaking in a non-Russian language in the presence of Russian speakers was also considered ‘indecent’ in almost all regions of the former USSR (Burykin 2004b, 27). It is also a manifestation of ‘monolingual ideology’ in communicative behaviour. Other studies have also repeatedly stated that during the Soviet years, people were reprimanded or given pejorative assessments in cities because they spoke non-Russian languages in public places (Ferguson 2016b, 99; Khilkhanova 2020).

However, the above fragment reflects not only the ideology of (Russian) monolingualism. Nora also speaks about the shame for not knowing the native language and about her wish to learn Buryat “even more than when I was in Buryatia”. Although such feelings and the desire to ‘regain’ an ethnic language rarely result in concrete actions to learn it and the majority of migrants remain with the same knowledge (or ignorance) of ethnic language with which they went abroad, their language attitudes, however, change. It can be also seen in another interview fragment:

Я столько разных языков знаю, а своего родного не знаю. Поэтому missing something, ощущение потери. (Sara, 25, Netherlands)
I know so many different languages, but I don’t know my native one. Therefore, missing something, a sense of loss.

This quote illustrates that abroad, in a foreign cultural environment, the ethnic awareness of migrants raises, including a sense of the value of native language as an important component of identity. In addition, the Soviet ideas of language hierarchy and association of the Russian language with progress and civilisation, and other languages with backwardness and an uncivilised way of life are erased in the minds of migrants. Such changes in the perception and evaluation of languages are also determined by the migrants’ new European localities. I mean that Western Europe is the birthplace of a new ideological paradigm built on the recognition of multilingual and multicultural values (Smokotin 2010, 4). This ideological turn was caused by the liberalisation of economic, political and social life in Western countries after the Second World War. In the USSR at that time, on the contrary, the early Soviet policy of supporting multilingualism was replaced by the policy of promoting the Russian language as the language of interethnic communication, so that it became the lingua franca of the entire country. Of course, even in Western Europe, the liberal approach is not universally recognised: there are enough

examples of preserving ‘old’ ideologies such as ‘one nation-one language’, ‘language-of-the-past’ (in relation to minority languages), and many others (Sallabank, Marquis 2018; Toivanen 2015). Nevertheless, in general, the liberation from language bias and the increased interest and pride in their language and culture are noted by many interview participants. This indicates that language ideologies as dynamic entities strongly depend on the social context.

The next interview fragment illustrates the attitude of a study participant to her CS between Russian and German:

А в целом если брать, я чувствую себя свободнее, когда на русском, потому что я лучше могу сформулировать свои фразы и выразиться точнее. То, что переключаюсь - это печально. (Edita, 26, Germany)
And in general, if you take it, I feel freer in Russian, because I can better formulate my phrases and express myself more accurately. The fact that I switch is sad.

We see that the informant assesses her CS as a disadvantage. In my view, this statement manifests the normative idea about language purity shared by many Russians. Purism and prescriptive language ideologies are very characteristic of the language culture of Russian society. As K. Pischlöger put it,

Although language purism or ‘prescriptivism’ is not restricted to Russia, Russia belongs to a ‘standard language culture’ […] in which there […] is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others, and that this ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community […]. This attitude is true particularly for the Russian language, but these ideas and standards are transferred by philologists and speakers of Udmurt and other minority languages in Russia to their own language(s). (Pischlöger 2016, 112)

These prescriptive and puristic attitudes have led to an almost exclusive scholarly interest in the standardised modern literary language (114) and in the ‘high’ spheres such as fiction, which is also explained by the authority of classical Russian literature. Therefore, ‘low’ spheres - such as the language of mass communication, spoken language and obscene vocabulary - have become objects of linguistic research in Russia only since the last decades of the twentieth century.

In many respects, such normative language attitudes originate in the Russian school where the normative approach to language dominates. The mode of duty, prescriptions, as well as ‘orthographocentrism’ are the most important features of Russian linguistic thinking (Golev 2002).

The desire to ‘abstain from mistakes’ taken to its farthest limit becomes a brake on the speech development, which should lead to free, creative expression of thought (it is enough to recall the advice of experienced teachers and tutors to their pupils to avoid phrases in the unmistakable spelling of which they are not sure). (Golev 2002, 190)

This is true both in relation to Russian and foreign languages. In Soviet times, the grammar-based method was dominant in foreign language teaching at Russian schools and universities. This resulted in grammatically correct speech, on the one hand, and in the fear of speaking out of fear of making mistakes, on the other.

Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that translingual freedom and creative treatment of languages, by definition violating their grammatical correctness and ‘purity’, are not widespread in the mass language consciousness of Russian residents. Of course, this is not an absolute statement, and the lingvocreative treatment of the Russian language is a frequent phenomenon both among professionals and lay people. Constant CS between Russian and minority languages is also widespread in Russia. However, for a large number of people, especially educated ones, correctness is absolutised, dogmatised, and sacralised (Golev 2002, 184), and language purism is one of the most common language ideologies in Russia. This explains the numerous debates about the ‘corruption’ of the Russian language under the influence of English. One of the Russian politicians V. Zhirinovsky expressed this mass concern proposing to do everything to “stop the Russians from using borrowed words and replace them with native Russian words” (Boguslavskaya, Kitanina 2016, 12). The prevalence of puristic ideologies in relation not only to Russian, but also towards minority languages was noted, apart from K. Pischlöger, by researchers of Sakha-Russian bilingualism (Ferguson 2016a), of Ukrainian and Russian languages (Bilaniuk 2005).

In the migration context, similar results were obtained by Kliuchnikova (2016) who studied linguistic practices, language attitudes and discourses on language(s) of Russian-speaking migrants in the North-East of England. She states that despite her initial assumptions, in her fieldwork she found very little evidence of any ‘ludic’ initiatives among the group under study, at least in the way that would explicitly operate both sets of linguistic resources - English and Russian. Kluchnikova explains rare linguistic games among Rus-sian-speaking migrants by several reasons including low numbers, irregular contacts and general unpreparedness for creative experiments. However, as one of the cornerstones for maintaining linguistic practices, the author names the set of attitudes towards language(s) and normative linguistic behaviour by bilingual speakers themselves (Kliuchnikova 2016, 277). The most influential language attitude, in

Kluchnikova’s view, is Russian speakers’ admiration of highly standardised, ‘classical’, literary norm of Russian that dominates over any urge to explore bilingual limits. The sense of belonging to the ‘Rus-sian-speaking continuum’ through shared norms and practices leaves little space for bilingual manoeuvres on the margins. Rare counterexamples illustrate the point providing a scarce contrast to wider creative passivity and inertness (Kliuchnikova 2016, 271).

6 Results and Discussion

This research examined the speech practices of a well-educated multiethnic and multilingual group of migrants from the former USSR in Western Europe from the translanguaging perspective. The field study participants were a heterogeneous group not only in terms of ethnicity, but also in terms of linguistic competence in L1, L2 and L3-n. Russian was the native language for one third of Buryat migrants who did not speak their ethnic language. At the same time, all migrants’ Russian language proficiency was native or native-like. Also, all of them had high linguistic competence in foreign languages, primarily in English. Thus, the possibility of translanguaging (including CS as one of the translingual strategies or as an instance of translanguaging,) between Russian and foreign languages was open to all research participants, and between L1 and L2, for two-thirds of them.

Nevertheless, the analysis of interviews, ethnographic observation data and the language of migrant social networks revealed few translingual strategies and practices; in fact, instead of translanguaging, both conscious and unconscious language choices in favour of Russian were made. There are many reasons for this: external, internal and linguistic. Among the external ones are low numbers of Buryat, Kazakh and Yakut migrants, irregular contacts with co-ethnics and dispersed living of these small groups’ members. However, the main reason for replacing translanguaging with linguistic assimilation is, in my opinion, that first-generation migrants from the FSU countries are products of the Soviet language policy. Therefore, in addition to ‘exporting’ their linguistic repertoire, they also export the relationships between L1 and L2 that have been established in their home country. Both in the country of origin and abroad, L2 (Russian) satisfies the need for mutual understanding, being the ‘language of interethnic communication’ of the multiethnic group of migrants from the FSU.

In post-Soviet Russia, language relations between the state (Russian) language and more than 150 other languages have not changed much. The short period of the ‘parade of sovereignties’ and "mobi-

lised linguicism ′10{ }^{\prime 10} in the nineties brought some changes: in almost all national republics of the Russian Federation, laws on languages and the concepts for the development of titular languages were adopted, and minority languages were introduced in school education. However, already shortly afterwards, the state returned to the Russiandominated ethnolinguistic policy; as a result, the language shift towards Russian continues among most minority groups in Russia (see also Mikhal’chenko 2019).

In addition to the ideas of language hierarchy and the pragmatic value of languages ingrained in the consciousness of people, language purism and the (Russian) ‘monolingual ideology’ are also widespread in the mass consciousness of Soviet people and Russian citizens. Of course, the ‘monolingual ideology’ was primarily part of the state language policy, but, like with all ideologies, the mechanism of its formation and functioning is reciprocal. By reciprocity I mean that, on the one hand, this and other ideologies regulate people’s social behaviour and dictate how they should think and behave. On the other hand, the language ideologies were implemented not only ‘from above’, but also ‘from below’, driven by ideological views about languages and their values internalised by the Soviet people. Since the language policy of Russia largely reproduces the Soviet one, as mentioned above, these language ideologies are also common among citizens of modern Russia.

Reciprocity is also manifested in the fact that language ideologies influence social and political reality and, in turn, are formed under the influence of situational, institutional and social contexts. Migration to Western European countries - where, according to informants, there is the rule of law and democratic values, non-discrimination, equality of career opportunities and conditions for selfrealisation - changes language ideologies towards greater liberality and tolerance. This proves once again that language ideologies are dynamic entities and strongly depend on the social climate and societal expectations. Similar changes in language ideologies are taking place in Russia, but with a delay of several decades.

All this explains the migrants’ reluctance or lack of need to cross the language boundaries and to create hybrid forms. The above-de-

10 The ‘parade of sovereignties’ was a series of declarations of sovereignty of various degrees by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. It followed a loosened power grip of the Soviet Communist Party as a result of the (democratisation) policy of the perestroika period. These declarations challenged the priority of the all-Union legislation over the republican ones (which started the so-called ‘war of laws’) and took actions to strengthen the republics’ economic independencies. The ‘parade of sovereignties’ ended with the collapse of the USSR (Sintsov, Bityutskiy 2019). ‘Mobilised linguicism’ refers to those movements in the republics the USSR consisted of, which ended with the adoption of laws proclaiming the languages of the peoples (nationalities), after which the republics were named, as their state languages (Guboglo 1998).

scribed language ideologies block the potential translanguaging that is based on the recognition of all languages as equal. Or vice versa, translanguaging can also be driven by directly opposite motives: awareness of linguistic inequality and protest against it encourage a person to provocation, aggression and creation of artificial ‘languages’, as in the mentioned book by Zaimogly, Kanak Sprak. In the absence of such awareness and protest, a person, especially one who has passed all levels of the Russian-language education system, automatically reproduces the monolingual patterns of ‘pure’ speaking in a more prestigious and more frequently used language.

The control of consciousness that prohibits making mistakes and the normative linguistic behaviour are also due to the fact that all highly educated migrants grew up reading classical Russian literature 11{ }^{11} and absorbed the values of Russian ‘standard language culture’. Thus, the general cultural level of the migrants also does not contribute to non-literary, profane, provocative treatment of languages. The little ‘urge to explore bilingual limits’ and to dynamically move between languages applies to both minority and foreign languages in contact with Russian.

To conclude, I hope that empirical findings and theoretical insights generated from the research presented in this paper can improve our understanding of translanguaging and language ideologies, particularly in relation to the FSU region. Hopefully, it also adds to an existing body of research on the Russian-speaking ‘ethnic’ migration and contributes to the disciplinary fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic and cultural anthropology.

11 Other ethnic literatures are not taught in Russian schools and universities, except for a few so-called ‘national’ faculties and schools.

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