Biz birgemiz, or Revisiting the Diversification of Russian Language in Kazakhstan

The criteria for pluricentric languages, generalized by the Working Group on NonDominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages (WGNDV), as well as our earlier condition of tightness, opacity, incomprehensibility of Kazakh Russian were used to discuss the possibility of its gradual formation. Two main conclusions were made: a) the Russian language of the post-Soviet space currently meets the criteria for pluricentric languages; b) the Russian language in Kazakhstan is going through rapid and noticeable diversification processes. The arguments of Kazakhstani linguists who assert (B.Kh. Khasanov, E.A. Zhuravleva, D.D. Shaibakova, etc.) or deny (Z.K. Sabitova, A.K. Kazkenova, etc.) the qualifications of the Russian language as variant in Kazakhstan - a country of long-term and massive Kazakh-Russian bilingualism. Generations of Russian speakers (monolinguals - ethnic Russians, Koreans, Ukrainians and others and bilinguals - Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Uighurs and others) with a dominant Russian or a dominant ethnic language - are involved in the processes of Soviet Russification and modern Kazakhization with different effects. Nowadays the diversification of the Russian language in Kazakhstan is taking place against the background of a fundamental change in the status and functional state of the Kazakh and Russian languages; reducing the number of native Russian speakers; fundamental changes in Kazakh-Russian bilingualism, reflected in the crisis of the linguistic identity of a part of Kazakhstanis, in a linguistic shift towards the Russian language (Koreans, part of Kazakhs, Ukrainians, small ethnic groups, etc.) and a turn of the linguistic shift of Kazakhs; strengthening the position of the Kazakh language in business, culture, education, mass media, interethnic communication; the changed vector of influence of languages (Kazakh Russian) and the openness of the Russian language for oral and written borrowings, especially in media texts; finally, new communication needs of Kazakhstanis. The long-term linguistic and cultural borderland, which forms the internalized conceptual-mental picture of the world inherent in Kazakhstanis, has become a fundamental factor stimulating the diversification processes of the Russian language in Kazakhstan.