Browse

Taking a broad sociolinguistic perspective, the book explores a comprehensive set of tensions which emerged from the dislocated and deterritorialised position of the Russian language in the contemporary world. It examines the contexts within which Russian speakers’ identities are being shaped in various locations across the globe, the shifting attitudes towards the Russian language outside the metropolis, the emerging new varieties of Russian, and the use of the Russian language as soft power in the transnational russophone media. In order to discuss problems posed by the current stage of globalisation of Russian, a number of non-metropolitan spaces are sampled: chapters take the reader to locations which include both the post-Soviet states, namely Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus, and the countries of the traditional; West’ - Italy, the US, and Israel.

This book focuses on the closely allied yet differing linguistic varieties of Birmingham and its immediate neighbour to the west, the industrial heartland of the Black Country. Both of these areas rose to economic prominence and success during the Industrial Revolution, and both have suffered economically and socially as a result of post-war industrial decline. The industrial heritage of both areas has meant that tight-knit and socially homogeneous individual areas in each region have demonstrated in many respects little linguistic change over time, and have continued to exhibit linguistic features, especially morphological constructions, peculiar to, or now restricted to, these areas. At the same time, immigration from other areas of the British Isles over time, from Commonwealth countries and later from EU member states, together with increased social mobility, have meant that newly developing structures and more widespread UK linguistic phenomena have spread into these varieties. The book provides a clear description of the structure of the linguistic varieties spoken in the two areas.