Attitudes towards Incipient Mankurtism among Kazakhstani College Students

• Autores: William P. Rivers
• Localización: Language policy, ISSN 1568-4555, Vol. 1, Nº. 2, 2002, págs. 159-174
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article examines the attitudes of prospective Kazakhstani parents towards the language in which their children would be raised, based on a survey of 857 Kazakhstani college students. “Mankurtism” is the russification of the elite of non-Russian nationalities. This article examines linguistic mankurtism in light of one goal of Kazakhstani language policy, that all citizens master Kazakh. Results indicating the desire to raise children in Kazakh include male gender, rural residence, and Kazakh as maternal language. The gender and residence results may indicate that urbanites, in particular young couples, will demonstrate mankurtism. Given the primacy accorded mother tongue, the relative disinclination among young Kazakh women to raise their prospective children in Kazakh,which parallels patterns of language choice among women in minority language communities in Austria, Brittany, and East Sutherland,poses a challenge to the spread of Kazakh.