A Small-Scale Study: Patterns of Language Choice in Families in Multilingual Kazakhstan

Abstract

Abstract This study considers a multilingual and culturally diverse post-Soviet country – Kazakhstan, where most of the population is bilingual or multilingual. In order to reverse the pre-colonial Russification, in the post-colonial period, the country has raised the status of Kazakh as the national language. However, Russian is kept as the language for inter-ethnic and regional communication, and English is adopted as the language of international communication. This small-scale study uses the concept of lifestyle diglossia (Saxena, 2014) to understand and explain the macro- & micro-level language practices in ‘regulated spaces’ and ‘unregulated spaces’ (Sebba, 2009) through the following research questions: (1) What are the attitudes of the participants towards the languages in their language repertoire?; (2) What are their patterns of language use in different domains at macro-level?; and (3) What are their patterns of language use in digital communication at micro-level? The participants in the study were 19 family members of master’s students at Graduate School of Education. The participants were divided into three groups by age: Teenagers (10-19), Younger Adults (20-39), and Middle-aged Adults (40-59). Questionnaires conducted among the participants were consisted of eleven questions, that were employed to elicit macro-level data on language repertoire, language attitudes and language use in three different domains, such as family, friendship, and education. The micro-level language use data in different contexts of digital communication (viz., WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram) were collected over a period of three weeks during the course Multilingual Society in the Spring’21. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit participants’ attitudes towards languages in their repertoires and their language choices in the social networks. The results of the study revealed a high competence in the Kazakh language use and a positive attitude towards it were on the rise among the youngest participants, notably by teenagers. However, mainly the Russian language was favoured and accepted as the most prestigious language among the younger adults and middle-aged participants. Although the respondents’ English language competence varies, the attitude towards learning it as a foreign language was positive among all three age groups. Moreover, the micro-analysis of digital communication revealed multi-modal code-switching among these languages. Besides, code-mixing, borrowings, neologisms, abbreviations, emoticons, and shortenings were mainly used by the respondents in their digital communication in all age groups. Based on the study results, the decision tree was drawn to depict language choice depending on the formal/informal settings, intimate/non-intimate topics, serious/non-serious issues and characterized the equal usage of all languages for different purposes.