Multilingual Practices in the Students' Microcommunity

Abstract

The study was based on a qualitative analysis of 125 minutes of audio recordings of multilingual speech in students' natural conversations in two towns in the Western region of Kazakhstan and was supplemented by 30 semi-structured interviews with representatives of the students' microcommunity. It focused on particular ways in which youths creatively mix Kazakh, Russian, and English in their everyday conversations. We explored specific translingual practices involving grammatical fusion that allows language alternation for a variety of reasons, including referential and expressive use, as well as structural parallelism. We identified three main types of translingual practices in our corpus: combinations of Russian stems and Kazakh affixes, English stems and Kazakh affixes, and Kazakh stems and Russian affixes. We also showed the meaning-making potential of Russian and English as languages of prestige and familiarity. Overall, we provided an account of the current language situation that enabled a better understanding of multilingualism and multilingual practices in an economically significant region of Kazakhstan.

Keywords

• language practice
• language situation
• multilingualism
• trinity of languages
• youth