Words Like Birds: Sakha Language Discourses and Practices in the City
354
Words Like Birds: Sakha Language Discourses and Practices in the City
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Overview
Words Like Birds analyzes modern Sakha linguistic sensibilities and practices in the urban space of Yakutsk. Sakha is a north Siberian Turkic language spoken primarily in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in the northeastern Russian Federation. For Sakha speakers, Russian colonization in the region inaugurated a tumultuous history in which their language was at times officially supported and promoted and at other times repressed and discouraged.
Jenanne Ferguson explores the communicative norms that arose in response to the top-down promotion of the Russian language in the public sphere and reveals how Sakha ways of speaking became emplaced in villages and the city’s private spheres. Focusing on the language ideologies and practices of urban bilingual Sakha-Russian speakers, Ferguson illuminates the changes that have taken place in the first two post-Soviet decades, in contexts where Russian speech and communicative norms dominated during the Soviet era.
Weaving together three major themes—language ideologies and ontologies, language trajectories, and linguistic syncretism—this study reveals how Sakha speakers transform and adapt their beliefs, evaluations, and practices to revalorize a language, maintain and create a sense of belonging, and make their words heard in Sakha again in many domains of city life. Like the moveable spirited words, the focus of Words Like Birds is mobility, change, and flow, the tracing of the situation of bilinguals in Yakutsk.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496212399 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2019 |
| Series: | Borderlands and Transcultural Studies |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 354 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
We Have Always Been Adaptable
Frameworks for Sakha Language Vitality
When investigating how individuals are socialized into using language, we often start with its acquisition in the home environment, among immediate family and close kin. However, it is clear that multiple actors beyond that initial circle shape the transmission of language-related ideologies and ontologies to children, and over the course of their growth to adulthood (and beyond), individuals will negotiate different elements and experiences that shape how they come to "be in language." In taking an approach that focuses on linguistic trajectories, we can see how speakers move toward or away from one language or another at various points in time, shaped by a host of forces; these trajectories, taken collectively, all come to shape the broader maintenance or shift of speakers toward one language or another (Wyman 2012, 8, 261; see also Kagan 2005; Valdés 2005). This notion of linguistic trajectory goes beyond the individual as well, as manifestations of "adaptability" have also shaped the continued maintenance of the Sakha language by its community of speakers. In seeking to understand how relatively small populations of language speakers have continued speaking their languages in light of colonization and other forms of globalized encroachment, community members cite their ability to "adapt" as being central to that process. This discourse of adaptability is prominent, for example, among Greenlandic Inuit who mention that their ability and willingness to adapt to forces both climatic and governmental has ultimately allowed them to maintain both their lifeways and their language (see Grenoble 2011, 26–27); a similar discourse is often brought up by Canadian Inuit as their language use adapts to take on new forms and venues (Daveluy and Ferguson 2009).
Many Sakha speakers give similar reasons for their continued vitality in speaking their language and maintaining cultural distinction in a region just across the pole. In one notable conversation, a Sakha friend, Lyuda, and I were at an open-air museum in Taatta, her home ulus, inspecting a display containing a preserved, Russian-style grain mill. Beyond it, a restored wooden Orthodox church rose above the birches with shiny, golden, freshly repainted domes, beside a meadow where a Sakha sacred tree, an aal-luukmaas, was strung with salama — ribbon and horsehair offerings (fig. 2). Gesturing at the mill and beyond, she said, "You know, we Sakha have always been adaptable. We always take the best of what we encounter so we can survive well, but don't lose ourselves [in the process]." Variations on this "adaptability" trope came up in many conversations I had with Sakha speakers, as they referenced a shared sense of curiosity about the products of cultural contact (both material and ideological), and how they were able to put those things to work in their favor; despite similar positive values being assigned to all things "ancient," the theme of adaptability continued to surface.
Expanding on recent sociolinguistic survey work by Sakha linguists (see, among others, Argunova 1992, 1994; Argunova and Vasil'eva 2000; Ivanova 2010, 2012; Ivanova and Semënova 2007; Sleptsov 2008), I take an anthropological approach as I strive to provide an ethnographic perspective on the dynamics of language and ideological contact that shape both policy and practice (see McCarty 2011). While there has been work on language policy and planning in the post-Soviet Russian Federation and former Soviet republics (see Pavlenko 2008), and more linguistic anthropological work conducted on those republics as well (e.g., Bilaniuk 2005, on Ukraine), in recent years there has been comparatively less exploration of the linguistic situations in the republics still remaining within the Russian Federation. Sakha is in a very different position compared to other minority indigenous languages in the Russian Far East (Evenki, Even, Yukaghir, Dolgan, and Chukchi, the northern indigenous minority languages, or iazyky malochislennykh narodov Severa, also spoken in the Sakha Republic). There are three major structural factors that seem to contribute to its current vitality; however, none of these alone is sufficient to explain the current linguistic situation, which necessitates an examination of language ideologies, practices, and trajectories.
The Infrastructure of Vitality
It is true that some of Sakha's linguistic vitality arises from sheer numbers; it has a much larger speaker base than the other indigenous Far Eastern languages. This high speaker population contributes to the way language policy and planning is carried out, as well as how the language is afforded prestige. As mentioned, Sakha has a decently large speaker base compared to the other indigenous languages in the Sakha Republic. Recent surveys counted 450,140 speakers of Sakha; 441,536 of those speakers are in the Sakha Republic, which has a total population of 958,528 (Vserossiiskaia Perepis' Naseleniia 2010). In the last major census in 2010, 466,492 people in the republic identified themselves as ethnically Sakha, and 401,240 (86 percent) reported speaking Sakha (Vserossiiskaia Perepis' Naseleniia 2010). Numerically speaking, Sakha would not appear to be an endangered language by most criteria. While other minority languages in the Russian Federation — like Tatar with over 4.5 million speakers or Chuvash with 1.1 million — are also official languages of their respective republics, and have a larger population of speakers, Sakha's situation is significant as none of these other northern indigenous languages spoken in the region has more than 3,500 speakers (Vserossiiskaia Perepis' Naseleniia 2010).
There is also the issue of state classification and national historical discourses surrounding ethnic labeling and classifications. While Sakha d'ono (Sakha people) might be considered "indigenous" according to many international definitions of the term, the ways in which they have been positioned by the tsarist and Soviet regimes and, subsequently, the Russian Federation make their situation more complex. They do, for example, fit Niezen's (2003, 19–23) criteria of holding original (or prior occupancy) to a specific territory before colonization (by the Russian Empire in the 1600s), maintenance of cultural difference, and marginalization with their relationship in regard to an ethnically Russian dominant population. The ways in which many Sakha speakers link land, language, and spirituality also position them as indigenous according to this definition; like many other contemporary indigenous groups the world over, they have also been denied state-controlled profits from resource extraction and suffered environmental degradation because of it (Hicks 2011; Crate 2006a). However for many Sakha their sense of self-identity as indigenous is more complicated due to persistent legacies of state categorization. Some English-language anthropologists (Balzer 2003; Crate 2006a, b) refer to them as indigenous, while others present the nuances of a more complex situation. Hicks (2011, 220), for example, shows how the transformation of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from Soviet republic to a "sovereign ethno-nation [was based] on the model of European nation states" and that Sakha occupy a space between "indigeneity and nationality."
As will be discussed in chapter 3, the language ideologies repositioning Sakha in this new republic mix elements of what might be classified as local Sakha ideologies combined with other concepts drawn from broader Soviet-Russian (and European) views of the role of the "native language." Thus many Sakha themselves hesitate to call themselves indigenous. "We're not part of the 'korennye malochislennye narody Severa!' [native minority peoples of the North]," my friend Sajyyna insisted in one conversation we had over tea at a café with another mutual friend, Dajaana. Due to the conflation among many Russian speakers of "minority" and "indigenous," coupled with colonial ideologies stemming from the tsarist era that treated osedlye (settled) groups differently from those who were purely kochevye (nomadic) or brodyache (wandering) like the Even (Forsyth 1992, 156), many Sakha made a distinction between the "native minority people" and themselves. "But Sajyyna," Dajaana interjected, "if we're not mestnye, korennye [local, native] ... where are we from, then? Bu dojdubut [This is our land]," she finished in Sakha, as if to stress her point about the other possible meaning of the term. "Nu, daaa [well, yesss]," Sajyyna eventually relented. Variations on this conversation occurred many times within my fieldwork; they often popped up on the ykt.ru Sakha Tyla (Sakha language) forum as well from time to time. The reluctance of some Sakha to claim a global sense of indigeneity may partially be due to the fact that their "settledness" afforded ethnic Sakha certain privileges when it came to self-organization and, later, language planning, making it more advantageous to focus on their categorical distinction from other local groups. Thus between Russian-based and internationally recognized conceptions of indigeneity, Sakha occupies a space both within and between these categories — this positioning has allowed speakers to benefit from top-down, state language planning in significant ways.
Overall Sakha has benefited strongly from its position as an "official" language alongside Russian since the creation of the Sakha Republic in 1992, in ways that speakers of Even, Evenki, Yukaghir, Dolgan, and Chukchi have not. As will be described in detail in chapter 3, perestroika and the related political, social, and economic reforms shaped the language planning that was instituted during the early 1990s, which aimed to transform both policies and ideologies to revalorize the language. Nevertheless some speakers I interviewed expressed concern about the future maintenance of Sakha. This concern was often articulated by linguists as well, especially during the early post-Soviet years; Sakha has been labeled as "potentially endangered" (Salminen 1998) or in a "precrisis state" (Argunova 1994, 87). This feeling of precariousness persists, due to the continuous dominance of Russian and the careful balance of bilingualism that most Sakha speakers must navigate, especially those living in Yakutsk (Ferguson 2015, 2016b). Many speakers mentioned feeling a kind of in-betweenness due to this status: they speak a language that is still transmitted to children, a language with institutionalized support — but the language is really only locally or regionally vital, and positioned as subordinate at the federal level. While ethnic Sakha numbers are now beginning to rise in Yakutsk over those of ethnic Russians, the dominance of Russian as a federal lingua franca, of foremost importance in so many domains, is still not diminishing. The Sakha case thus sheds light on what it means to be a speaker of a language in this liminal state between potentially declining and truly thriving; a close examination may help to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the current policy and planning models, as well as the bottom-up actions and quotidian practices of speakers that are maintaining the language. As mentioned a popular belief in the power of Sakha words and the Sakha language, and the ability of speakers to "move" and adapt — both literally and figuratively — are key elements that help shed light on why the Sakha language remains as vital as it does.
Furthermore Sakha is an indigenous language that has traditionally crossed ethnic boundaries. While a vast majority of speakers of Sakha ethnically identify as Sakha, the language has historically been a second, and even first, language for many of the other indigenous peoples of the region. Sakha had been a regional lingua franca used in trade long before Russians arrived in the Far East, especially in the highly multicultural uluses in the republic's far northeast.2 Sakha is spoken by many who do not identify as Sakha; for example, the second-largest group of people after ethnic Sakha reporting competence in the Sakha language are Evenki, with 81 percent of those living in the Sakha Republic speaking Sakha, and only about 6 percent speaking Evenki. Statistics are similar among the Even, with 72 percent speaking Sakha and 21 percent speaking Even (Vserossiiskaia Perepis' Naseleniia 2010). Sakha was also commonly learned by early ethnic Russian settlers to the region; while not usually spoken by many non-Sakha in urban spaces, speakers descended from early incoming populations in rural areas of the republic may still speak it currently, just as do members of other local indigenous groups.
Third, there is a general sense of uniformity and intelligibility among Sakha speakers of different dialects. According to most contemporary linguists Sakha is classified as having four main dialectal groups: Central, Northeastern, Northwestern, and Vilyuy (fig. 2). Within those groupings other subdialects exist but differences are fairly negligible (see, among others, Voronkin 1999, 154; Pakendorf 2007). Both speakers and linguists consider them all to be generally mutually intelligible, and most speakers tend to agree on these broad groupings when discussing particular features that distinguish different ways of speaking Sakha. This comprehensibility among Sakha speakers is in stark contrast to many of the other indigenous languages of the Russian Far East.3 In the course of my research I spoke to only one person who stated that she felt that her dialect of Sakha was not understood by others; Roza, a middle-aged woman from Verkhoyansk (in the north of the republic), told me that she always spoke Russian when in Yakutsk, because other Sakha speakers claimed not to understand her. In claiming she was not easily comprehended, she felt that her way of speaking was looked down upon by other speakers, who would sometimes jokingly point out the particular cadences and intonation patterns of her speech. This feeling was generally rare, however; most accounts of such differences tended to be positive or neutral.
This shared comprehension of regional differences in ways of speaking is likely partly due to the fact that Sakha speakers spread out over the vast territory that is the Sakha Republic only relatively recently, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Forsyth 1992, 63). Differences, primarily lexical and phonological, developed due to differing regional linguistic substrate influences (e.g., more or less Evenki or Mongolic contact) and the isolation of populations from each other.4 Sakha speakers conceptualize their dialects as quite similar to each other; many researchers note that this is a key reason the language is being maintained (Sleptsov 2012, 113). While linguistic difference and similarity (both in terms of dialect and register) can be salient in highlighting speaker relationships and may be manipulated to create intimacy and exclusion, a general trend toward fewer dialectal distinctions also strengthens an attitude of mutual comprehension of different ways of speaking Sakha.
Sakha's advantages over other indigenous languages of the Russian Far East include its recognition by the state, its high speaker count even among ethnic non-Sakha, and its high interdialectal intelligibility. These three factors are certainly part of why Sakha is being spoken more and more widely in various spheres, including the urban domains of Yakutsk; they form a sort of "infrastructure" of supportive factors that help to create favorable conditions. However, such conditions are necessary but not sufficient to understand the vitality of the language. To fully account for the present position of the language, one must also look to speakers' communicative practices, life history, and beliefs about language and its place in a speaker's worldview. These intertwined themes are, I suggest, critical for understanding how Sakha has been maintained; they also help us to comprehend the tensions between what speakers consider fixed in their language versus the fluidity and adaptability that manifest in linguistic metadiscourse and communicative practices themselves.
Language Policies, Ideologies, and Ontologies
"Okh, yt tahagha!" my friend Künnej muttered under her breath, as she attempted to maneuver her car out of a tight parking space in the center of the city. "Oops, you didn't hear that," she then said as she turned to me somewhat sheepishly. "What did you say?" I asked, as all I had recognized was the word yt (dog). "Nothing!" she said, switching to Russian. "Just an unpleasant word." "Ha, it's kind of like iakutskii mat [Sakha profanity]," Künnej's friend Dunya chimed in from the back seat, evoking the term mat, which in Russian signifies a class of obscenities and vulgar language that has been censored in the media. I realized then that I didn't really know any words that would be considered "swear" words in Sakha. "No, it's not really mat," Künnej interjected. "We don't have the same kind of thing in Sakha. It is not so severe. That's why Sakha speakers usually swear in Russian if we are going to swear like that. But we really shouldn't." Dunya then added, "Yes, we don't really swear like Russians might, especially if we're from the village. That's why Künnej sounds like her granny: yt tahagha! It means 'dog scrotum,' you know!"
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Transcription and Transliteration
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Short History of Sakha
1. We Have Always Been Adaptable: Frameworks for Sakha Language Vitality
2. Sakha under the Tsars and Beyond: Language Policies and Communicative Norms
3. Like Sweet Cream and Lingonberries: Language, Spirits, and Sustenance
4. One Drop Traveling along a Great Artery: Moving the Ulus to the City
5. Sakhalyy in the City: Language Mixing and Indexing Authenticity
6. Acquiring Russian, Maintaining Sakha: Language Choices and Life Trajectories
7. Ohuokhaj in Lenin Square, Hip Hop in Virtual Tühulgeter: Adapting New Spaces for Sakha
Conclusion: Words Like Birds
Notes
References
Index