No subject

[John Dunn]

One can think of several more or less good reasons why sociolinguistic research is or has been difficult to conduct in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.  There is, though, a 4-volume study called Русский язык и советское общество [Russkij jazyk i sovetskoe obshchestvo], edited by M.V. Panov and published in 1968.  Not quite today's language, perhaps, but from what I remember (I haven't got the volumes to hand), there is a great deal of statistical data of a type which I don't think can be found anywhere else.   And, though there are a number of general surveys of post-Soviet Russian, I am not aware of anything that goes into anything like that level of detail.

It may be possible to find some interesting information in the surveys carried out by organisations such as VTsIOM and the Levada-tsentr.  I know that surveys exist on attitudes to мат [mat] and there may be others on language-related topics.

There is, however, a related issue, which is not (or not necessarily) sociolinguistic.  As the co-author of a recently published grammar I am aware of the dearth of information concerning the grammar constructions that people really use (as opposed to the ones that grammar books say they use or should use).  Here I would imagine that the corpora gradually being made available will help, at least for the written language, but in the meantime I would draw your attention to L.K. Graudina, V.A. Itskovich, L.P. Katalinskaja, Грамматическая правильность русской речи [Grammaticheskaja pravil'nost' russkoj rechi], M., Nauka, 1976, a book which is far more interesting than the unpromising title might suggest.

John Dunn.

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of anne marie devlin [anne_mariedevlin at HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: 17 September 2010 09:37
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS]

It's such a shame then , that this exodus took place as so many of the queries surround linguistics and especially sociolinguistics.  I would be very grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of any studies into the Russian sociolinguistics.  I am aware of studies into L1 acquisition and the natural order of acquisition, but would love to find out more about how language is used today.

Regards

Anne Marie

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