Abstract:

The article examines the types and causes of linguistic insecurity experienced in Russia by graduates of Azerbaijani schools who have received education in the Russian language. The research methodology is based on our observations of Azerbaijani schoolchildren communicative behaviour and a series of eight semi-structured research interviews with respondents, graduates of Russian language schools living in Russia.

Azerbaijan is a communicative multilingual space comprising, according to the 2009 census, representatives of 15 peoples and languages. Azerbaijani and Russian are the languages of instruction in primary and secondary schools. Bilingual educational programs are not introduced for now. There exist so-called Azerbaijani and Russian sectors in Azerbaijan schools. The Azerbaijani sector teaches exclusively in Azerbaijani; Russian is taught as a foreign language. In the meantime, Russian sector teaches exclusively in Russian and Azerbaijani is taught as the state language. Today, the number of schools with only Russian as the language of instruction amounts 15 and there are 314 schools with two parallel sectors.

Despite the undoubtedly high level of proficiency in Russian, graduates of Russian-language schools have difficulty in communicating in Russian in the Russian Federation and find themselves in a situation of linguistic insecurity. This is due to a whole group of factors. The Azerbaijani language dominates in the communicative space of Azerbaijan; Russian is spoken only by 7.6% of the population. Schools where Russian is the language of instruction are not in a monolingual environment; they often experience switching and mixing codes at all levels of the linguistic structure, which leads to the formation of a special type of communication.

In the Russian sector, a number of students experience cognitive and social difficulties associated with individual and social bilingualism. Schoolchildren whose family language is Azerbaijani have trouble both in communicating with the teacher and in expressing their thoughts in Russian. Schoolchildren from families speaking Russian find it difficult to socialize in the society where the main means of communication is the Azerbaijani language.

There are also linguistic and sociolinguistic difficulties associated with the tangible differences between the Russian language in Azerbaijan and Russia, especially with regard to the reduced forms, in particular, colloquial and vernacular variants of the language. Azerbaijani young people are little familiar with the youth slang. The presence of abbreviated words can also cause difficulties in understanding Russian speech.

In this paper, we introduce and discuss the ways to overcome linguistic insecurity such as students’ immersion in the communication environment, development of various forms of online communication and participation in international Olympiads in the Russian language.

Keywords:

Linguistic insecurity, bilingual education, language of instruction, language as a subject, migration.