Development of bilingualism in the Republic of Tuva: dichotomy of pragmatism and identity values

Abstract

The development of official bilingualism in the Republic of Tuva is considered in terms of the linguistic justice theory and the dichotomy of pragmatism-identity values. The specificity of the functionally first/functionally second language dichotomy in the Republic of Tuva is that is does not correlate with the conventional dichotomy of majority/minority languages. To conduct practical research, the authors collected data from the most recent population census in Russia, as well as conducted sociolinguistic surveys and interviews in the Republic of Tuva between 2020 and 2022. The study has revealed a clear pragmatic value of the Tuvan language in family, friendship, professional, and virtual communication to be closely correlated with the identity value. There are several tendencies to be noted. First, functioning as a second language for most Tuvan adults and serving as the primary language for the majority within the Russian Federation, the Russian language retains strong positions in the Tuvan-Russian bilingual space. Second, the diminishing influence of the titular languages in Russian republics’ education system amplifies the practical significance of the Russian language. Third, given the Russian language predominance in children’s entertainment content in the Internet space, one can observe a rapid shift towards Russian becoming the primary or sole language of communication among children, even in monoethnic rural areas like Tuvan. To conclude, the aforementioned trends have necessitated the implementation of a suitable regional language policy and planning tool, like the State Support Strategy for the Tuvan language, which was approved by the local government in 2023.