FUNCTIONS OF THE ETHNIC LANGUAGE IN THE MARI DIASPORA OF THE MOSCOW REGION

Kutsaeva Marina Vasilievna

DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2021-4-58-72

Information About Author:

Kutsaeva Marina Vasilievna, candidate of philology, research fellow (group for Finno-Ugric languages, department of Ural-Altaic languages). RAS, Institute of Linguistics. 1 Bolshoi Kislovskij lane, build. 1, Moscow, Russia, 125009. E-mail: marina.kutsaeva@iling-ran.ru

The article presents the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted by the author in the Mari diaspora of the Moscow region aimed at identifying and describing the functioning of the ethnic language. One of the aspects of the study is devoted to the establishment of the functions, assigned to the ethnic language in the conditions of the diaspora residence of an ethnic group. Despite the insignificant degree of the Mari language use in the Moscow region (due to the ubiquity and dominance of the Russian language there) and its use mainly in family, household, friendly, sometimes professional communications, the Mari language, however, performs several important functions in the diaspora. The survey results revealed the following functions: communicative, phatic (contact-establishing), the function of a secret language (used in a public space between Mari speakers or in the home communication between some family members), emotional (which language the respondents are likely to think, dream, swear, joke in), sacred (the language of appeal to the divine powers, the language of religion and religious practices) and symbolic (language used as a symbol of group identification). As a result of the survey, the distribution of functions of the Mari language by generations was established, as well as some patterns, majorly related to the proficiency levels in the Mari language and the respondents’ belonging to the first or the second diaspora generation. Factors preventing the use of Mari in some functions mentioned above have been equally singled out.

Keywords: Mari language, ethnic language, internal diaspora, Moscow region, functions of the language

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Issue: 4, 2021

Series of issue: Issue 4

Rubric: LINGUISTICS

Pages: 58 — 72

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