Linguistic Landscape of Russian Borderland Regions

This study is dedicated to the research of the linguistic landscape in the borderlands of Russia. The Republic of Karelia, the Orenburg Oblast and Primorsky Krai were selected as the regions in which the study was directly conducted. The research question of the study is how the living conditions in the borderlands affect the linguistic landscape of the territory? An additional task was to expand knowledge about the linguistic situation in the regions by correlating the linguistic landscape and the linguistic situation. In this paper, we have reviewed significant works on the language landscape; relevant studies on NL of transboundary territories; data on demographics, language situation and language policy in selected regions, then built our own theoretical framework. It involves a qualitative analysis of empirical data (LL photographs and interviews) and an assessment of the language landscape in the following categories: top-down LL, bottom-up LL, cross-border component, local component, ethnic component, design/stylization of visual LL. After analyzing the data for each region separately, we compared the data for the three border regions and made conclusions. In the course of the work, the following empirical research methods were used: interviews, thematic analysis, and observation. According to the results of the study, it turned out that in Karelia and Primorye, the border position and the national minorities inhabiting the region really influence the language landscape. The Orenburg region in this respect resembles regions from the depths of the country. We also assume that the situation in the Astrakhan region is similar to Orenburg. An important conclusion from the work is that the representation of minorities in LL does not always come from ethnolinguistic vitality. The largest linguistic minorities turned out to be invisible in the LL of all the regions considered. Visible and large minorities may not appear in the language landscape and vice versa - small communities may be overrepresented in it. Moreover, the invisibility of the community in the language landscape can be explained both by the lack of opportunity and the lack of a real request for visibility in the community. Meanwhile, excessive visibility can be explained not even by the factors of ethnolinguistic vitality, but, for example, by the high symbolic position of the community or economic reasons. The language landscape as a tool, however, should not be used in isolation - the researcher must always take into account the demographic and social context. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that in this work, for the first time, data on the linguistic landscape of the border regions of the North-West, South and East of Russia were analyzed and compared. The object of the study is the linguistic landscape and linguistic communities of the Russian borderlands. The subject of the study is the language situation and the functioning of cross-border contacts.