A general account of the languages of the Soviet Union, one of the most diverse multinational and multilingual states in the world as well as one of the most important. There are some 130 languages spoken in the USSR, belonging to five main families and ranging from Russian, which is the first language of about 130,000,000 people, to Aluet, spoken only by 96 (in the 1970 census). Dr Comrie has two general aims. First, he presents the most important structural features of these languages, their genetic relationships and classification and their distinctive typological features. Secondly, he examines the social and political background to the use of functioning of the various languages in a multilingual state. The volume will be of importance and interest to linguists and to those with a broader professional interest in the Soviet Union.

The former Soviet Union (USSR) provides the ideal territory for studying language contact between one and the same dominant language (Russian) and a wide range of genealogically and typologically diverse languages with varying histories of language contact. This is the first book that bundles different case studies and systematically investigates the impact of Russian at all linguistic levels, from the lexicon to the domains of grammar to discourse, and with varying types of outcomes such as relatively rapid language shift, structural changes in a relatively stable contact situation, pidginization and super variability at the post-pidgin stage. The volume appeals to linguists studying language contact and contact-induced language change from a broad range of perspectives, who want to gain insight into how one of the largest languages in the world influences other smaller languages, but also experts of mostly minority languages in the sphere of the former Soviet Union.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

The Germanic language family ranges from national languages with standardized varieties, including German, Dutch and Danish, to minority languages with relatively few speakers, such as Frisian, Yiddish and Pennsylvania German. Written by internationally renowned experts of Germanic linguistics, this Handbook provides a detailed overview and analysis of the structure of modern Germanic languages and dialects. Organized thematically, it addresses key topics in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of standard and nonstandard varieties of Germanic languages from a comparative perspective. It also includes chapters on second language acquisition, heritage and minority languages, pidgins, and urban vernaculars. The first comprehensive survey of this vast topic, the Handbook is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects.

The political revolutions which established state socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were accompanied by revolutions in the word, as the communist project implied not only remaking the world but also renaming it. As new institutions, social roles, rituals and behaviours emerged, so did language practices that designated, articulated and performed these phenomena. This book examines the use of communist language in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods. It goes beyond characterising this linguistic variety as crude "newspeak", showing how official language was much more complex – the medium through which important political-ideological messages were elaborated, transmitted and also contested, revealing contradictions, discursive cleavages and performative variations. The book examines the subject comparatively across a range of East European countries besides the Soviet Union, and draws on perspectives from a range of scholarly disciplines – sociolinguistics, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, historiography, and translation studies. Petre Petrov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke is Head of Russian and Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russia Centre in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

Church Slavonic, one of the world’s historic sacred languages, has experienced a revival in post-Soviet Russia. Blending religious studies and sociolinguistics, this book looks at Church Slavonic in the contemporary period. It uses Slavonic in order to analyse a number of wider topics, including the renewal and factionalism of the Orthodox Church; the transformation of the Russian language; and the debates about protecting the nation from Western cults and culture.

This is the first Handbook to deal with language policy as a whole and is a complete 'state-of-the-field' survey, covering language practices, beliefs about language varieties, and methods and agencies for language management. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and language professionals in linguistics, education and politics.

A detailed academic treatise of the history of nationality in Tatarstan. The book demonstrates how state collapse and national revival influenced the divergence of worldviews among ex-Soviet people in Tatarstan, where a political movement for sovereignty (1986-2000) had significant social effects, most saliently, by increasing the domains where people speak the Tatar language and circulating ideas associated with Tatar culture. Also addresses the question of how Russian Muslims experience quotidian life in the post-Soviet period. The only book-length ethnography in English on Tatars, Russia’s second most populous nation, and also the largest Muslim community in the Federation, offers a major contribution to our understanding of how and why nations form and how and why they matter – and the limits of their influence, in the Tatar case.