Quality, comfort, and ease: Remapping the affordances of Russian language in Tbilisi, Georgia

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tbilisi, Georgia from 2011-2012, this dissertation describes how Russian language functions as a code embedded in sociotechnical interfaces. The dissertation discusses Tbilisian social practices of various kinds in order to investigate the complex range of interpretations of Russian linguistic influence. Russian language use in contemporary Georgia has receded over the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite this, Russian remains strongly influential as a language of technical skill and interethnic communication in Tbilisi. In auto repair shops, weightlifting training halls, cell phone retail kiosks, and movie theaters, using Russian in preference to Georgian language is rationalized by evaluative terms such as "ease" or "comfort." Lingua francas are not neutral, pragmatic tongues, but instead carry with them ideologies about how their use should complement or extend functions of the national language(s). A special function of Russian as a lingua franca is that it is associated with a former, aspired-to utopian future, in which it would act as a medium of communication delinked from politics. Working against the notion that languages of empire are simply symbolic expressions of political power, this dissertation investigates the particular social and physical settings in which Russian language in Tbilisi has become durably enmeshed. To do so, I present a theoretical account of the historical and sociotechnical dimensions inhering in the multiple ways social actors use and evaluate Russian code. This prompts new consideration of the interface between language politics and aesthetic dimensions (like "quality") of language of use. I discuss former president Mikheil Saakashvili's recent political aspirations at achieving a Euro-normative form of modernity. Saakashvili sought to remap Russian language by casting it as an impediment to achieving a version of modernity enactable through forms of talk. This dissertation evaluates the ideological and material conditions that structured this attempted remapping and militated against its success.

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