The Invisible Multilingualism of Post-Soviet Migration as a Challenge to the Theory of Translanguaging

Abstract

This article proposes to look at the theory of translanguaging from the angle of its universality/non-universality, bringing into discussion a new empirical case - speech strategies and practices of highly educated multilingual migrants from the former USSR and multilingual residents of modern Russia. The authors conclude that people whose socialization took place in this region are characterized by rigid ideas about the language norm and authenticity, about the “purity” of languages and high standards of speaking them. These concepts apply to all languages, both native and foreign. Traditional and conservative language ideologies are widespread in the Soviet and post-Soviet area, which is the reason why translanguaging is often perceived as careless speech, incomplete language competence. In this sense, this regional case demonstrates the non-universality of translanguaging theory and the importance of contexts in which attitudes towards multilingualism, linguistic norm and related linguistic phenomena are formed. It is primarily the western democratic, postcolonial context of translanguaging practice and theory that explains why the language attitudes and speech behavior of residents of (post)Soviet region do not fit into it.