Language Choice in Azerbaijani Context: A Sociolinguistic perspective

Abstract

This study deals with the issue of language choice from sociolinguistic perspectives. The problem of multilingualism and plurilingualism in sociolinguistics occupies a special field for the study and evokes the interest of most linguists. The goal of the research was to investigate language choice from sociolinguistic perspectives. This experimental work was carried out to verify the right choice of language (English, Russian, and Azerbaijani) and to identify its effectiveness, the data were processed and interpreted based on analysis. Special attention was paid to the multilingualism / plurilingualism issues and multilingualism in Azerbaijan separately. This paper presents the results of the quantitative method for sociolinguistic research in language. It was based on the interviews that were conducted among parents in order to learn their tendency to bring up their children in a multilingual society. Thus, parents were interviewed in different schools with Russian, Azerbaijani and English mediums of instruction; a school with Azerbaijani medium of instruction named as “Zangi” lyceum, a school with Russian medium named as “N_12”, a school with English medium called as “Baku-Oxford School”. This paper is an in-depth, multidimensional study of such choices in language. The results of the data analysis affirm a solid status of English as an international language in Azerbaijan and emphasize an undeniable position of the Azerbaijani language as well.