Abstract
The chapter examines the role of language and cultural space in shaping and/or reshaping the identity of both first- and second-generation Georgian teenage students in the state secondary school in Moscow with a Georgian ethnocultural component. By analyzing the students’ linguistic behavior in the classroom, an attempt is made to examine how students negotiate their identity and sense of belonging while outside Georgia. More specifically, this study shows how Georgian students (re)shape their identity in light of linguistic, cultural, and spatial changes taking place in the institutional settings of the Moscow school. The language of instruction in the school is Russian. However, taking into consideration the fact that the majority of the school teachers are ethnic Georgians, it appears that this has implicit (and in some cases explicit) underpinnings in relation to the students’ ethnic identity orientation. The results demonstrate that high institutional support at school as well as the students’ high sense of group belonging which is encouraged by the school’s administration and teaching staff contributes to students’ identity construction process. The evidence indicates that the blurring of ethnic and cultural identity boundaries in the context of the Russian capital city has an effect on the students’ linguistic behavior at different levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon).
References
Arefiev, A. L. (2017). Nacional’nye i inostrannye jazyki v rossijskoj sisteme obrazovanija. Moscow: Institute of Social-Political Research, RAS.
Aronson, H. I. (1990). Georgian: A reading grammar. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers.
Banks, J. (2009). Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global age. In J. Banks (Ed.), The Routledge international companion to multicultural education. New York: Routledge.
Blommaert, J., & Van Avermaet, P. (2008). Taal, Onderwijs en de samenleving. De kloof tussen beleid en realiteit. EPO: Berchem.
Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and Communication, 25, 197–216.
Fishman, J. (1999). Sociolinguistics. In J. Fishman (Ed.), Handbook of language and ethnic identity (pp. 152–163). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flores, N., & Beardsmore, H. B. (2015). Programs and structures in bilingual and multilingual education. In W. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 205–222). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Garcia, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Malden: Wiley/Blackwell.
Garcia, O. (2011). Educating New York’s bilingual children: Constructing future from the past. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(2), 133–153.
Garcia, O., & Kano, N. (2014). Translanguaging as process and pedagogy: Developing the English writing of Japanese students in the US. In J. Conteh & G. Meier (Eds.), The multilingual turn in languages education: Benefits for individual and societies (pp. 258–277). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2015). Translanguaging, bilingualism, and bilingual education. In W. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 223–240). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gogolin, I. (2002). Linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe: A challenge for educational research and practice. European Educational Research Journal, 1(1), 123–138.
Koryakov, Y. B. (2017). Jazyki Moskvy po dannym perepisi 2010 goda. Rodnoj jazyk, No. 2, 24–44.
Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2004). The new division of labour: How computers are creating the next job market. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, G., Johnes, B., & Baker, C. (2012a). Translanguaging: Developing its conceptualization and contextualization. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 655–670.
Lewis, G., Johnes, B., & Baker, C. (2012b). Translanguaging: Origins and development from school to street and beyond. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 641–654.
Mazurova, Y. V. (2017). Typological features of Russian as spoken by bilingual schoolchildren of Georgian descent. Rodnoj jazyk, No. 2, 121–141.
Megrelishvili, T. (2014). Russkij jazyk v Gruzii. In Russkij jazyk v mnogorechnom sociokul’turnom prostranstve. Ekaterinburg: Ural University Press.
Mujiri, S., & Kapanadze, I. (2014). Teaching difficulties and linguo-didactic description of Russian and German languages vocalism in the Georgian auditorium. Russkij jazyk i kul’tura v zerkale perevoda (pp. 88–101). No. 1.
Rudenko, B. T. (1940). Grammatika gruzinskogo jazyka. Moscow and Leningrad. USSR Academy of Sciences.
Souleimanov, E. (2013). “A wonderful country in the Caucasus…”: A brief history of Russo-Georgian relations in the Pre-Soviet era. International Journal of Russian Studies, 2(1), 109–118.
Woolard, K. (1992). Language ideology: Issues and approaches. Pragmatics, 2(3), 235–249.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Russian Foundation for Basic Research that funded the present project, № 16-04-00474.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Zoumpalidis, D., Mazurova, J.V. (2019). Ethnic Self-Perception of Georgian Teenagers in Moscow: Role of Language and Culture. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_149-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_149-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Earth and Environm. ScienceReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences