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Code‐Mixing among Sakha–Russian Bilinguals in Yakutsk: A Spectrum of Features and Shifting Indexical Fields
Author(s) -
Ferguson Jenanne K.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/jola.12123
Subject(s) - indexicality , linguistics , code mixing , neuroscience of multilingualism , copying , ideology , lexicon , sociology , history , political science , code switching , law , philosophy , politics
In this article, I examine language mixing among Sakha–Russian bilinguals in Yakutsk, the largest city in the Republic of Sakha–Yakutia in the far northeastern region of the Russian Federation. Since the end of the Soviet era, the increasing movement of Sakha‐speakers from rural areas to the city has been shaping the language practices of bilingual speakers there, creating opportunities for Sakha usage outside of the home in settings formerly dominated by Russian. Through a discussion of language contact between Sakha and Russian, and of the borrowing or copying process through which Russian words enter into the Sakha lexicon, I consider the ways in which purist language ideologies and indexical meanings shape the spectrum of feature choices that bilinguals navigate when speaking Sakha. I also describe a syncretic speech style that is beginning to undergo enregisterment (Agha 2003) in the urban space of Yakutsk, showing how certain features that display varying degrees of bivalency play a particularly important role in this process.