THE FERGUSON CENTRE FOR
AFRICAN AND ASIAN STUDIES
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THE FERGUSON CENTRE FOR |
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Roehampton Conference Abstracts 9. Irina Chongarova (Paissij Hilendarski University of
Plovdiv, Bulgaria): Irina Chongarova is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Languages and Intercultural Communication in the Faculty of Philology. Her publications are in semantics, lexicography and cultural studies. This presentation begins with an overview of the three waves of Russian immigration to Bulgaria. The ambivalence of the title is not accidental, as this study is concerned with both the human and the linguistic side of the phenomenon. The main linguistic issues concerned are: the differences between Russian language spoken by the first, the second and the third generation of immigrants; bilingualism and language maintenance; morphological, syntactical, lexical, pragmatic characteristics of language loss under specific language contacts. The analysis is based on a case study of 30 Russians, living in Bulgaria for a period longer than 5 years. Special attention is paid to the latest immigration wave, since the reasons for Russians to migrate to Bulgaria during the last 15 years are closest to what could be defined as economic ones. Despite the fact that most of those who have come to Bulgaria during the last decade have applied for permanent Bulgarian citizenship, such immigrants do not make a special effort to adapt to the social or linguistic environment. This presentation addresses such issues as Russian immigrants’ legal status in Bulgaria, their specific social and demographic characteristics, and the maintenance of specific cultural and linguistic traits. Official statistical data and texts from the Russian language publications in Bulgaria (“Russkaia gazeta”, “Sootechestvennik”) are taken into account. The methodological frame of the research is defined in Russian linguistics
research of the last two decades as "Linguoculturologia". Some
basic terms and theoretical presumptions of this framework will be examined;
it is understood as an exceptionally broad field in which we study and
describe the correspondence between language and culture in their synchronized
interaction.
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