Information about the author:
Svetlana V. Kirilenko
Svetlana V. Kirilenko, PhD in Philology, associate professor, researcher of the Research Center on Ethnic and Language Relations, Institute of Linguistics RAS, B. Kislovsky per., 1 building 1, 125009 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7902-6032
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article considers the language conflict as a sociolinguistic phenomenon, analyzes the factors that can potentially lead to the emergence of conflict moods among speakers in the language community. The author analyzes the “threat theory” as a tool for measuring the conflict potential of a language community. The stimuli accompanying the emergence of a language conflict in a language community are described. Those stimuli can later be analyzed as markers for measuring the conflict potential in the given language community. The article describes a technique that can act as a tool for measuring anxiety among groups of speakers. An analysis of the parameters collected during the field study is revealed in the article. One of the field studies was carried out in May–June 2021 in the Republic of Dagestan. Another one was held in October 2021 in the Republic of Tatarstan. Based on the data obtained from the field studies, two approaches were tested: measuring the level of “symbolic threats” and measuring the level of “real threats” in order to identify existing contradictions in the language community. The collected data showed that in the area of “real threats” there is a certain level of anxiety, while in the area of “symbolic threats” the situation is generally well–balanced.
Keywords: language conflicts, language contacts, conflict potential, realistic threats, symbolic threats.