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УДК 81-23
DOI 10.52575/2712-7451-2023-42-3-523-530
Features of Bilingualism in the Era of Globalization:
Theoretical Aspect
Svetlana A. Kosharnaya, Rashidi Karimullah
Belgorod National Research University 85 Pobeda St, Belgorod 308015, Russia baghana@yandex.ru
Abstract. The problems of language contacts acquire a new perspective view in the period of Globalization, which is dictated by the influence of extra linguistic factors: demographic parameters, the social structure of society, cultural and linguistic features. Despite the numerous publications on this issue, still there is no single terminological apparatus on the analyzed problem in modern Linguistics. Due to the fact that this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied, it is necessary to determine the dominant types of bilingualism and multilingualism in the conditions of intercultural interaction, as well as to identify factors affecting the degree of a bilingual in a multilingual environment adaptation process. The purpose of the research work is to determine the specifics of bilingualism phenomenon in the context of globalization and to identify its key characteristics. The research work has proved that English, representing a means of global communication and adapting to the conditions of recipient languages and cultures, acquires new characteristic features. Interference processes lead to linguistic transformations at the phonetic, lexical and grammatical levels of recipient languages. It is revealed that interference processes affect the lexical structure to a greater extent, which is manifested in the highly productive functioning of borrowings from the English language. The results of the research work have a new theoretical direction in the study of bilingualism problems in multicultural society.
Keywords: English, bilingualism, globalization, interference, communication
For citation: Kosharnaya S.A., Karimullah R. 2023. Features of Bilingualism in the Era of Globalization: Theoretical Aspect. Issues in Journalism, Education, Linguistics, 42(3): 523-530 (in Russian). DOI: 10.52575/2712-7451-2023-42-3-523-530
Особенности билингвизма в эпоху глобализации: теоретический аспект
Кошарная С.А., Каримулла Рашиди
Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет, Россия, 3008015, г. Белгород, ул. Победы, 85 baghana@yandex.ru
Аннотация. В эпоху глобализации вопросы изучения языковых контактов приобретают новый ракурс, что продиктовано влиянием экстралингвистических факторов: демографических параметров, социальной структурой общества, культурно-языковыми особенностями. Несмотря на многочисленность публикаций по этой проблематике в современной лингвистике отсутствует единый терминологический аппарат по исследуемому вопросу. В силу того, что данное явление недостаточно исследовано необходимо определить доминирующие типы билингвизма и мультилингвизма в условиях межкультурного взаимодействия, выявить факторы, влияющие на степень адаптации билингва в мультиязычной среде. Целью данного исследования является определение специфики феномена билингвизма в условиях глобализации и выявление его ключевых свойств. Доказано, что английский язык, представляя собой средство глобальной
© Kosharnaya S.A., Karimullah R., 2023
коммуникации и адаптируясь к условиям лингвокультур-реципиентов, приобретает новые свойства. Интерференционные процессы приводят к лингвистическим трансформациям на фонетическом, лексическом и грамматическом уровнях языков-реципиентов. Выявлено, что в большей степени интерференционные процессы затрагивают лексический строй, что проявляется в высокопродуктивном функционировании заимствований из английского языка. Результаты исследования открывают новое теоретическое направление в исследовании проблем билингвизма в условиях мультикультурализма.
Ключевые слова: английский язык, билингвизм, глобализация, интерференция, коммуникация
Для цитирования: Kosharnaya S.A., Karimullah R. 2023. Features of Bilingualism in the Era of Globalization: Theoretical Aspect. Issues in Journalism, Education, Linguistics, 42(3): 523-530 (in Russian). DOI: 10.52575/2712-7451-2023-42-3-523-530
Introduction
The idea of globalization is widely used to describe the significance of universal trends in the development of modern society, manifested in close interaction and rapprochement of countries and peoples in the spheres of international politics, economics, culture, science, art, and sports. The modern world is characterized by a powerful dynamic of changes in all spheres of life due to the introduction of the latest information and communication technologies, the spread of the Internet and the emergence of many new types of social communication, as well as mass communication and mass media. Globalization turned out to be the main stimulating factor of the intensive mixing of nationalities, cultures and languages. In the context of globalization, the language contacts of two or more languages in a single or adjacent language space are expanding and deepening, causing variability of linguistic units in phonetic, lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactic, stylistic levels influencing the structure, vocabulary, and functioning of a single language or group of languages. Therefore, the aspects of cross cultural communication are of great relevance and determine the perspective of modern linguistic research which requires additional research.
Linguistic globalization has become an integral part of modern society internationalization. It is a process of languages interpenetration in the conditions of one language world dominating. The emergence and development of an open universal information and communication space has created conditions for the intensive spread of bilingualism in most countries of the world. The idea of globalization is inextricably linked with the concept of a single language embracing the population of the globe. Currently, such unifying role is taken by the English language which is confidently leading as lingua franca, as a means of interethnic communication [Kachru et al., 2006]. Most of the works of the famous British linguist David Crystal [Crystal, 2003] are devoted to the description of the English language as a global one which performs a number of important communicative functions: the function of the main state language for residents of a large number of countries; the function of the official language used in government institutions, the legal system, advertising, the media, as well as in the education system, the function of priority when choosing a foreign language for education. According to D. Crystal, "the stable economic, political and military situation of the state contributes to the creation of conditions for the recognition of the country's language as global, from the point of view of its functioning in the world community, today the English language fully meets the specified requirements" [Crystal, 2003, p. 76]. Despite numerous publications there is no clearly formulated terminological apparatus in modern linguistics that defines the definition of bilingualism in modern society, and the types of bilingualism in the conditions of multicultural interaction are not fully identified yet.
The scientific problem lies in the contradiction between the current linguistic trends - the influence of globalization on the state of the languages in the world community and the need to preserve linguistic and cultural diversity. The prospects for solving the problem are connected with
the need to clarify the areas of English borrowings functioning as a means of global communication and the possibility of using analogues from autochthonous languages.
The purpose of the research work is to identify the theoretical concepts of bilingualism at the present stage of the world community development, taking into account the influence of extra linguistic factors and reveal its main types in the conditions of multicultural environment.
At present, the most powerful transformations are taking place in the life of the world community in all spheres (political, economic, cultural, linguistic). The mass media are an indicator of the changes taking place in society: television, radio, cinema, periodicals. In globalizing society, there is an orientation either to the Western way of life, or to assimilation with the American cultural fashion, or to a special type of worldview - cosmopolitanism. The English language is becoming international in science, business, diplomacy and is used in all types of QMS and mass media. Using English as the basis in computer technology and Internet is a must. The English language is also a must have language in Asia, Africa and Europe, where it is used for both professional and everyday communication in situations of intercultural interaction.
Methods
The object of research work is the multilingualism of the world community, the subject of research is the processes affecting the specifics of bilingualism in the era of Globalization. The research methodology includes an integrated approach and is based on the use of two groups of methods: general scientific methods which include generalization, analysis, synthesis; and highly specialized methods which include comparative analysis, distributive analysis, and the method of component analysis.
Results and discussion
It is also necessary to note the functioning of a global language is not native to many speakers, it functions in forms of a second language (ESL), as a lingua franca (ELF), as opposed to English as a native (ENL). The number of non-native English speakers using it daily significantly exceeds the number of its native speakers. As it is known, B. Kachru divided the world variants of the English language into three concentric circles: "the Inner Circle; the Outer Circle; the Expanding Circle" [Kachru et al., 2006].
On the territories of the former colonies of Great Britain (for example, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, the Caribbean), being subjected to the prolonged influence of indigenous languages, English has acquires a number of specific features that distinguish it from British English. As a result of these transformations due to local languages systems New variants of British English have been formulated which are called New Englishes.
Recently the term Global Englishes, proposed by Jennifer Jenkins [Jenkins, 2014, p. 34], has been used instead of the term World Englishes, which is used to denote a variety of territorial variants of the second and third circle round development of English. According to the scientist, this term more accurately defines the expanding range of those numerous variants of the English language spoken by non-native speakers in the context of global communication. In the linguistic literature, there are descriptions of special types of English used by native speakers of other languages - these are the so-called Denglish, Franglish, Runglish, Spanglish, Chinglish, Japanglish, Hinglish, Singlish and others.
The modern globalizing society is characterized by a tendency to expand the communicative capabilities of people in a situation of inevitability and necessity of close interlanguage and intercultural contacts. That is why, in the period of linguistic globalization the issues of bilingualism become especially relevant. Bilingualism takes place in connection with the need to overcome the language barrier in the conditions of language communication among various ethnic groups in a multinational state. Bilingualism considers speech acts in relation to the speech behavior of various people groups and is a complex scientific problem. The multidimensional nature and complexity of the bilingualism problem indicates the difficulty of formulating a
universal definition of bilingualism, taking into account the individual characteristics of bilingualism and character of the bilingual society linguistic life in various political, economic, cultural and historical conditions. Actually, the linguistic and psychological aspects are the most developed in science.
Linguistic science today gives understanding of bilingualism types variants based on different approaches to its manifestation (linguistic, psycho-linguistic, psychological, sociological, linguodidactics, cognitive, etc.). The founder of the theory of language contacts "is U. Weinreich who distinguished three main types of bilingualism - coordinate, mixed (compound) and subordinate" [Tonsing, Soto, 2020, p. 194]. The following dichotomies of bilingualism are most often discussed in the linguistic literature: natural and artificial, mass and individual, direct and indirect, receptive and productive, coordinate and subordinate, pure and mixed, child and adult, active and passive, normative and abnormal, balanced and dominant, spontaneous and natural, etc. [Tsimpli et al., 2020, p. 4].
Modern linguists note the great role of the speech portrait as a component of the speaker's appearance in the formation of a personality holistic image. Like a linguistic personality, a speech portrait can be individual and collective. The collective speech portrait allows to generalize the phenomena inherent in a certain circle of people united in national, age, social, professional terms. In modern linguistic bilingualism is classified in the sociolinguistic aspect, it is necessary to clearly define criteria that would have their own sociolinguistic status and suggests the following: the presence of two or more nations, nationalities and their representatives in a given territory or in a group; the presence of two languages that serve as a means of communication; the presence of various demographic and social groups; the need of mastering a second language by an individual, a group of people, a nation; the action direction of contacting languages in a particular bilingual community of people; the type of native speakers coverage of one nation by another type in the bilingualism conditions; the area of bilingualism; the degree of interference activity at different levels of language in urban and rural areas.
English as lingua franca and as the intermediary language of the globalization era represents a unique case of linguistic variability, primarily due to territorial (including regional) and social factors. «The continuous change of extra linguistic factors in the modern world in which languages come into contact with each other in complex multicultural circumstances leads to significant changes within the languages themselves and to the emergence of various hybrid forms of contacting languages (Russian English, Indian English, Singapore English, French English, etc.), having specific linguistic characteristics, especially vividly marked in the sounding form of speech at the phonetic level» [Baghana et al., 2018, p. 30].
Constant change is a universal characteristic of all languages of the world. Native speakers, «constantly communicating with each other, consolidate linguistic changes; The pace of economic development and the processes of globalization in its sphere causes replacement of native words in Russian, German, French and words of other languages with English terms, such as marketing, label, brand, shopping, manager, realtor, etc.» [Baghana et al., 2018, p. 34]. Language learning, as well as its teaching, is impossible without taking into account the factor of variability. Any modern language is a dynamic entity that manifests itself in the form of speech realities, and its nature is determined by a variety of internal and external factors.
The development of the XXI century requires a deep analysis of those language forms that are caused by active processes of speech creativity in conditions of close linguistic contacts of dominant languages with other languages functioning worldwide. Among the factors of linguistic variability the following points can be distinguished: sociolinguistic variability (conditions of social communication); textual variability (the degree of linguistic expression, the nature of discourse and the method of information transmission); stylistic variability (style and genre of communication); regional variability (differences and similarities of regional language varieties); territorial variability (language variants); gender variability (features of male and female speech and communication styles); variability caused by interference of contacting languages (lexical, grammatical, phonetic variability); individual variability.
The most significant factor of variability in the conditions of linguistic globalization is the actual language contact which generates the phenomena of language interference. All speech behavior of a bilingual which is an active object of the implementation of language contact is marked by interference. This phenomenon is comprehensively described in many works. Interference is the case of deviation norm form of any language following language contact. The problem of language contact was analysed mainly at the level of language borrowings, convergence, divergence. It should be mentioned that bilingualism as a living process occurs primarily not in language but in speech. In modern linguistics, there are many interpretations of the interference idea. Most often interference is understood as a process and result of language systems in bilingual speech interaction while one system dominates another one, generating the effect of influence in the secondary, acquired language system. The result of the contacting language systems interaction can be both negative and positive [Awonusi, 2002, p. 23].
Professor J. Baghana mentions, «interference is the language system influence of another language with the most influential power reflecting in lexical borrowings» [Baghana et al., 2018, p. 27]. Recognizing the fact that the processes of lexical borrowing are the most productive to interference phenomena the scientist believes that lexical borrowings, perhaps, are the only type of interference for which bilingualism is not necessary, borrowings are rapidly spreading in a monolingual community as well. Borrowing is an element of a foreign language (word, morpheme -syntactic construction, etc.) transferred from one language in another as a result of linguistic contacts, as well as the process of transition of elements of one language into another. Lexical borrowings are one of the most controversial issues of linguistic globalization discussed in linguistic works. The types of lexical borrowings are diverse. The reasons, sources and ways of borrowings penetration into another language are numerous. Borrowing is a process resulted in foreign language element functioning and is fixed in the language (first of all, a word or a full-valued morpheme). According to the general knowledge of linguists, the evolution of borrowings in the new language system occurs in accordance with the laws of the receiver language at the phonetic, graphic, grammatical and semantic levels. The appearance of a large number of borrowings from English can be considered as the result of intensive and extensive contacts in the light of global processes.
The activation of the language development process in the modern world is largely due to borrowings which is explained by a number of reasons: a large influx of borrowings is caused by the rapid growth of scientific and technological achievements; the universal nature of modern technology requires a more adequate transfer of the foreign term the meaning; wider familiarity with foreign languages, as well as the flow of translated information makes the exchange between the dictionaries of the contacting languages more intense and more diverse in form. One of the linguistic consequences of this process is the point of view change on Anglicisms: they are perceived, for example, in the Russian language no longer as alien words, not as exoticism, but as words subject to borrowing and assimilation. The influence of the English language to the Russian language has continued to increase dramatically in recent years, and the activity of the process of English and American borrowing is becoming extremely productive. At the beginning of the XXI century English borrowings are the part of socio-political vocabulary and of everyday and terminological vocabulary, for example, bike, killer, mass media, laptop, player, printer, top model, shaping, shop, etc. A characteristic feature of modern speech is that along with borrowed words, new concepts and realities arise, phenomena that are new in the life of Russian-speaking society require a new language to be analysed. Of particular interest is the language of computer periodicals. On the one hand, English words are more capacious and convenient to use compared to Russian equivalents and often using English words allows to avoid cumbersome descriptive translation, since it is not easy to find the appropriate equivalent in Russian.
On the other hand, this fact may be associated with an insufficient level of professionalism of translators or with an unwillingness to choose an equivalent, since it is much easier to take a ready-made word, i.e. to transliterate, transcribe or calculate. In many modern Russian-language
magazines, there is a frequent use of English words and phrases in the original English graphics [Chen, 2020, p. 980]. When analyzing bilingualism as a phenomenon, it is also necessary to separate the concept of diglossia considered in sociolinguistics in parallel which is the process while speakers of two or more varieties of the same language are used on some specific porpose. In parallel with bilingualism and diglossia, there is also an important concept of code switching idea which characterizes the situation of using several languages or subcodes by one social subj ect (a person or a group of people in the context of social interaction) [Garcia, Kleifgen, 2020, p. 560]. The difference is that diglossia is characteristic of different spheres of communication, whereas code switching is only for one. Code switching is maximally separated from discourse whereas borrowing is a full-fledged component of it. Code switching is spontaneous whereas borrowing can be traced diachronically. Code mixing is quite close in its specificity to switching and occurs when components of different languages are used together [Gullifer, Titone, 2020, p. 287]. The phenomena of switching and mixing codes are situational and verbal, but they can become the basis for subsequent borrowings. There are five differences between mixing codes and borrowings: "borrowings are rarely full-fledged phrases, they are more often separate lexemes, mixing codes involves all levels of the language; borrowings are also manifested in the speech of monolinguals, while the mixing of codes is a phenomenon characteristic only for bilinguals; expressions subjected to borrowing usually have no equivalents in the borrowing language whereas the situation of duplication is typical for the codes; borrowings represent a limited set of expressions whereas code mixing involves the entire set of language tools; the largest number of borrowings are nouns, while the mixing of codes involves all parts of speech" [ Ibraximova, 2023, p. 116].
Let us consider another aspect of language interaction that is most susceptible to interference in the language context, namely the phonetic aspect of speech.
Currently, in Russian society there is a strong desire of young people to learn foreign languages, not only English, but also Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, etc. Bilingualism is spreading rapidly in the world due to the mass migration of the population in the XXI century. One of the current trends in the humanitarian science of the period of globalization was children's bilingualism, which is based on the material of many language contacts. The number of countries involved in the educational children's bilingualism has increased significantly. In children's bi-linguistics education programme English is combined with Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Czech, Slovak, Turkish and other languages.
The spread of the English language in Russia contributes to a more effective entry of Russians into the world cultural space. It must be admitted that bilingualism is becoming a natural, rapidly spreading phenomenon of intercultural communication in modern society, which is impossible to resist and the consequences of which are still difficult to predict. Bilingualism is undoubtedly of great interest both for scientists and for all those who seek to master another language in order to carry out real speech communication with speakers of other cultures.
As an example one can cite the political bilingualism associated with language policy at the state level in those countries where two or three languages have official status, they are Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Morocco, etc. Multilingual countries most often choose one of two approaches to preserve bilingualism - personal or territorial. In the first case, the main focus is on ensuring individual human rights to speak a particular language, while the territorial approach assumes the preservation of bilingualism within a specific region (a similar language policy is carried out in Belgium). In India, where languages are officially recognized, the formula of three language is used: in addition to the two national languages of the country, Hindi and English, schoolchildren can learn another language (the language of their state). In modern Canada, English and French are recognized as state languages, which is due to historical, political and social reasons [Yule, 2017].
Conclusions
Bilingualism is the practice of alternating use of two languages; possession of two languages and the ability to use them successfully in the communication (even with minimal knowledge of languages). Theoretically bilingualism implies equaly perfect knowledge command of two languages, the ability to equally use them in the necessary conditions of communication, but practically, one language usually dominates. Thus, there are three types of bilingualism: mixed, coordinate and subordinative, the mixed type of bilingualism involves the development of a second language on the basis of the first. Coordinate bilingualism implies the same command of two languages, and its systems do not overlap. In the case of subordinative bilingualism, the second language is influenced by the language of thinking, which is the dominant language. A certain types of bilingualism in the conditions of cross cultural communication is multilingualism, which is determined as the ability of a person to use more than two languages within the same social environment. This term is used to characterize relations between different speech communities, both within a separate state and at the interstate level. Multilingualism is a new reality of cross cultural world today. English is now a global means of communication and is adapted to all spheres of countries all over the world, which is resulted in many New Englishes or English variants. New English variants being transformed to a new reality are influenced by local languages structures and have specific features in phonetics, grammar and lexis. As the result of interference processes lexical transformation prevails phonetic and grammar changes and is clearly seen in the productive English borrowings functioning in recipient languages.
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Конфликт интересов: о потенциальном конфликте интересов не сообщалось. Conflict of interest: no potential conflict of interest related to this article was reported.
References
Поступила в редакцию 15.06.2023 Received June 15, 2023
Поступила после рецензирования 19.07.2023 Revised July 19, 2023 Принята к публикации 10.09.2023 Accepted September 10, 2023
ИНФОРМАЦИЯ ОБ АВТОРАХ
Кошарная Светлана Алексеевна, доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры русского языка и русской литературы, Белгородский государственный национальный университет, г. Белгород, Россия.
Каримулла Рашиди, аспирант кафедры романо-германской филологии, Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет, г. Белгород, Россия.
INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Svetlana A. Kosharnaya, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Russian Language and Russian Literature Department Professor, Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia.
Rashidi Karimullah, post graduate student, the department of Romano-Germanic Philology, Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia.
