On language gifts: public discourses on Kazakh and Russian in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article examines public discussions on Kazakh and Russian in post-Soviet Kazakhstan between 1989 and 2019 by using the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse. It focuses on how conflicting knowledge orders of the sociolinguistic reality are discursively (re)produced and advanced by various social actors in order to be accepted as ‘true’ and ‘legitimate’ in Kazakhstani society. Based on the concept of gift, the article reconstructs the language conflict as a dynamic discursive process of meaning-making and knowledge ordering in which the cultural values of the Kazakh and Russian language gifts and self-perceptions of Kazakhs and Russians are negotiated.

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