Belarusian Russian in Language Continuum: Contacts and Conflicts

Olga GORITSKAYA

University of Minsk, Belarussia

(goritskaya@gmail.com)

Keywords: Belarusian Russian, borrowings, language attitudes, language continuum

There are two official languages in Belarus (Belarusian and Russian), and intensive contacts of Russian and Belarusian is inevitable in this situation. Belarusian and Russian are genetically closely related and structurally very similar languages — compare, for example, with Russian and Estonian (Verschik 2002). Therefore, we can observe a language continuum in Belarus:

·         Standard Russian: norms of Russian are codified only in Russia,

·         Belarusian Russian: a variety in formation (del Gaudio 2013),

·         Belarusian-Russian mixed speech — so-called Trasjanka (Hentschel 2017, and other works of the Oldenburg project),

·         Nonstandard russified Belarusian,

·         Standard Belarusian (official and unofficial standards).

In this paper, I analyze the database of metalinguistic discussions about the Belarusian variety of the Russian language. I gathered the data while observing computer-mediated communication (social networks, forums, online mass media, etc.). The volume of the database is about 30000 words. Metalinguistic discussions explicitly demonstrate language attitudes that exist in Belarusian society and speakers' perception of pragmatics of linguistic units.

The paper focuses an two problems that are relevant for understanding language contacts in pluricentric languages with contiguous language areas (the similar issues exist in Ukraine and some other countries):

1.      Separation of Belarusian Russian from the contiguous phenomena in language continuum.

2.      One the major problems in the formation of Belarusian Russian as a separate variety is its association with low prestige linguistic phenomena, primarily with the Belarusian-Russian mixed speech. The analysis of metalinguistic discussions shows coexistence and conflicts of opposite language attitudes. Contact-induced phenomena in Belarusian Russian are perceived as "illiterate" (negative attitudes) or as a marker of individuality, uniqueness of Russian-speaking Belarusians (positive attitudes).

3.      Reflection of social conflicts in contact-induced nominations that a typical of the non-dominant variety.

Pragmatics of borrowings from the Belarusian language into Belarusian Russian is heterogeneous (e.g. zmagar ' oppositionist', mova 'language, usually Belarusian'): there are positive, negative and neutral lexemes, some words have cultural and ideological connotations, and the majority of borrowings can be used in ironic contexts. Study shows that pragmatics of borrowings reflects language attitudes that are tied to social and political problems (i.e. the Belarusian language was associated with political opposition, but nowadays attitude change is observed).

References

Del Gaudio S. (2013). Russian as a Non-Dominant Variety in Post-Soviet States: a Comparison. In: Rudolf Muhr et al. (eds.). Exploring Linguistic Standards in Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Frankfurt am Main, etc. Peter Lang Verlag, 343-363.

Hentschel, G. (2017). Eleven questions and answers about Belarusian-Russian Mixed Speech (` Trasjanka'). In: Russian Linguistics. April 2017, Volume 41, Issue 1,17-42.

Verschik, A. (2002). Russian-Estonian contacts and mechanisms of interference. In; Tames, 6 (56/51), 3, 245–265.