Educational Spaces and Linguistic Hierarchies: A Decolonial Analysis of Russian in Kyrgyzstan

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Multilingualism and Education in "Post-Soviet", Post-Colonial Spaces

Proposal

The study explores the dynamics of decolonization in the multilingual context in Kyrgyzstan, with reference to the long-lasting influence of the Russian language and the pivotal role of education in shaping language ideologies and practices. We study how Soviet and post-Soviet education language policies have constructed linguistic hierarchies, often privileging Russian at the expense of Kyrgyz and other indigenous languages. Our goal is to critically assess how the educational practices involve colonial and neocolonial legacies in Kyrgyzstan's multilingual language ecology. We also examine how Russian in Kyrgyzstan has become pluricentric, varying from the standard Russian of the Russian Federation to local variations shaped by contact of Kyrgyz language and culture. The study does not consider any kinds of deviations from Inner Circle standards as necessarily mistakes, or developmental stages, but potentially as linguistic features of local varieties, adapting a classification of China’s English into the variety closest to Inner Circle English norms as acrolect, most adapted to Chinese as basilect, with intermediate varieties termed mesolect (Proshina, 2023). In these terms, acrolect Russian is closest to the standards of metropolitan Russia, mesolect has some localized Kyrgyz aspects, while basilect Russian will display many Kyrgyz features and codemixing with Kyrgyz. The educational context, therefore, not only reflects the colonial and neocolonial legacies of language policy but also becomes a critical place where new linguistic identities and hierarchies are negotiated. Data sources include policy documents, textual materials, focus groups, classroom observations, and secondary research.
Key words: Language decolonization, Language education policy, Educational language practices, Multilingual education, Russian language in Kyrgyz education, Kyrgyz language in schools, Pluricentric Russian, Language contact in education, Linguistic hierarchy in schools, Code-mixing in the classroom.

Authors

• FERUZA SHERMATOVA, I. Arabaev Kyrgyz State University

• Maksat Totobaev

• Stephen A Bahry, OISE, University ofToronto