English as a ‘local’ language in Russia: the practice of meaning-making in in-group communication

Abstract

The unprecedented global spread of the English language has become the catalyst for its transformation into the local meaning-making resource encoding the communication needs of various speech communities in different parts of the world. This dual process of globalization and localization is particularly evident in the Expanding Circle countries, where originally English had the status of a foreign language and was used primarily to communicate with foreigners. In Russia, which is one of the Expanding Circle countries, various aspects of “glocalization” of English, especially in the sphere of vocabulary, have attracted considerable attention. However, they have not been systemically studied, and our analysis aims to fill this gap. This paper describes the function of English as a language of in-group interaction in Russia. Taking a multiple case study approach and using a constant comparative technique, we reviewed our previous research on the use of English in different communities of practice, namely, the Russian offices of international companies, the young biking community, and the community of popular music professionals. We re-examined all previously collected material, including observational linguistic data and ethnographic interviews, and identified the following three features of English as a “local” language: truncated repertoire, bilingual creativity, or translanguaging, and ingroup-only function. We have also searched the Russian National Corpus for the frequency of several commonly used Anglicisms and English-derived tokens recorded from each community of practice. Based on the multiple case analysis and the Russian National Corpus study, we argue that English and Anglicisms are perceived by community members as an integral part of group repertoire, and group membership hinges on the knowledge of these terms and the ability to use them creatively.