ICCEES VIII World Congress Stockholm July 2010 Russian as Lingua Franca in the Far Abroad Arto...

ICCEES VIII World Congress

Stockholm July 2010

Russian as Lingua Franca in the Far Abroad

Arto Mustajoki

Project

“Russian and Finnish as lingua francas”

financed by the Academy of Finland

with cooperation of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation

Starting points 1

Types of speech situations

StNS ↔ StNSNon-StNS ↔ Non-StNS (dialect speakers, speakers of other variants of language, children etc.)

StNS ↔ Non-StNS (baby talk)

NNS ↔ NS (foreigner talk)NSS ↔ NNS (lingua franca, язык-посредник, язык межнационального общения)

Starting points 2

When NSs of languages A and B encounter, they have the following options:

1. They refrain from interaction

2. They use non-verbal tools of communication and paper

3. They use an interpreter as a facilitator of communication

4. They both speak their native language, A and B

5. They use A or B

6. They use a third language (lingua franca)

7. The use of a combination of A and B (pidgin)

Starting points 3

We use language…

for getting and giving information (a rather formal and simplified language)

for expression of emotions (need for quick reactions and command of nuances of “small words” of the language)

for expression of identity and/or belonginness to a certain group of people (status of different languages in that community, fashion)

Starting points 4

The traditions of Russian linguistics

Great interest in the language spoken by носитель литературного языка

Debate on variants of Russian (Estonian / Swedish / Degetanian… Russian)

Starting points 5

Certain features of English as a lingua francanon-use of third person –s (She look very sad)interchangeable us of who and which (a book

who; a person which)omission of definite and indefinite articlesincreasing of redundancy (can we discuss about,

How long time?)overuse of general verbs like put, take, makeplularisation of nouns (informations, advices)overuse of that-clauses (I want that we discuss

about that topic later)

Arto Mustajoki

Professor of the Russian Language

Department of Modern Languages

University of Helsinki

http://www.helsinki.fi/~mustajok/index_en.html

Publications in pdf:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~mustajok/pub/pdf-publications.html

arto.mustajoki@helsinki.fi