THE ROLE OF THE STATE LANGUAGE IN THE ETHNIC PRESS: CRIMEAN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article studies the functioning of the Crimean ethnic press from the end of XIX century to the beginning of the XXI century in the linguistic aspect, in particular, the role of the Russian language in Crimean ethnic publications of the past and the present is studied. Based on the analysis, the author draws conclusions about the main opportunities for using the state language in the ethnic press. The author believes that the ethnic press, which represents the interests of its ethnos and speaks on its behalf, should be extremely interested in giving information about the life of its people, its history, traditions, problems for as wide a range of readers as possible. And for this task, the ethnic press actively uses both state and languages of interethnic communication. This happened in Crimea, where, from the very moment of its appearance in January 1860, the ethnic press began to turn to the Russian language, striving to be as effective as possible in solving the problems of the represented ethnic groups and in promoting their achievements. According to the author, the Russian language in ethnic publications of the Crimea is non-alternative for editions of ethnic groups who have lost their native language; gives an opportunity to expand the audience for editions of ethnic groups, not all representatives of which have a sufficient command of their native language; promotes the increase of the audience at the expense of representatives of other peoples interested in this or that cultural-national autonomy, while promoting intercultural dialogue and a tolerant approach to solving confessional and national problems; helps the representation of a certain ethnos at the national and international levels.