Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 34

A Review of E. G. LAPINA-KRATASYUK, O. V. MOROZ, E. G. NIM (eds.), NASTROYKA YAZYKA: UPRAVLENIE KOMMUNIKATSIYAMI NA POSTSOVETSKOM PROSTRANSTVE [LANGUAGE SETTING: MANAGING COMMUNICATIONS IN POST-SOVIET SPACE]: A COLLECTIVE MONOGRAPH. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2016, 448 pp. (Nauchnoe prilozhenie, no. 153)

Kapitolina Fedorova

European University at St Petersburg
3 Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
fedorova@eu.spb.ru

Abstract: The ways people use languages in their everyday life and culture can reveal a lot not only about their circumstances but about the perceptions they have of their lives and positions in society. It is not surprising then that in all times and under any political regimes, people aspiring to power aim to control not only financial and political processes but language as well; it is used to impose their will on others. However, these attempts often fail, and language slips away from them, turning in something totally different — а language game, joke, or jest. That’s why this process of “seizing language” is so interesting for professional linguists: they see language not as a hammer for nailing ideas in people’s heads, but rather a delicate instrument measuring even tiny social changes. A collective monograph written as part of the research program of the Center for Cultural Studies at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration seeks to reflect on linguistic processes in the post-Soviet space and find correlations between different regimes of language use, new “discourses and vocabularies”, and social and cultural practices and norms of post-Soviet countries.

Keywords: language policy, discourse, post-Soviet countries, communication studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic processes, regimes of language use.

To cite: Fedorova K., ‘A Review of E. G. Lapina-Kratasyuk, O. V. Moroz, E. G. Nim (eds.), Nastroyka yazyka: upravlenie kommunikatsiyami na postsovetskom prostranstve [Language Setting: Managing Communications in Post-Soviet Space]: A collective monograph. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2016, 448 pp.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 34, pp. 259–269.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/034/fedorova.pdf