S. Smyth EXCHANGING WORDS2.2. English-language proficiency Some participants were comfortable in...

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Slavica Helsingiensia 40 Instrumentarium of Linguistics Sociolinguistic Approaches to Non-Standard Russian, Helsinki, 2010 A. Mustajoki, E. Protassova, N. Vakhtin (eds.) 329 S. Smyth EXCHANGING WORDS В статье исследуются слова и выражения английского языка, ставшие частью бытового русского языка, на котором сегодня говорят в Ирландии. На основе данных, собранных во время групповых интервью с восемью фокус-группами в 2009 г., рассматриваются случаи включения английских слов, фраз и предложений в русскоязычные дискуссии. Предложив теоретические рамки анализа дискуссии, автор учитывает языковой репер- туар и языковую идеологию говорящих, а затем выясняет, какова мотивация к смеше- нию кодов для тех, кто считает смешение языковым грехом, как языковые практики участников отражают их отношения с принимающим англоговорящим обществом и с другими русскоговорящими в Ирландии. Выясняется, что участники прибегают к сме- шению кодов, чтобы проблематизировать доминирующие понятия англо- или русско- говорящего миров, в которых они находятся одновременно (в данном сообществе и в обществе извне). Смешение кодов является и стратегией, и необходимым следствием этого процесса. This article investigates the English-language words and expressions that have gained cur- rency in the Russian spoken in Ireland today. The article draws on the data collected in eight focus groups bringing together Russian speakers in Ireland in 2009 and asks what the discuss- ants are doing when they embed English words, phrases or sentences in Russian-language discussions. 1 Having contextualised the discussion in a theoretical framework, I discuss the participants’ language repertoires and language ideology before asking: what needs motivate code mixing in a population who consider it a linguistic transgression? how do participants’ language practices reflect their relations with the English-speaking host community and with other speakers of Russian in Ireland? I conclude that discussants deploy code mixing to prob- lematise the hegemonic conceits of the English- and/or the Russian-speaking worlds they in- habit. With a foot in each lingustic and sociocultural camp – the English-speaking world out- side the room and the Russian-speaking discussion within the room – participants renegotiate their relations with each of those two worlds, and reconfigure those two worlds’ relations to one another. Code mixing is both a strategy in this process and a necessary consequence of it. 1. Theory 1.1. Introduction The following analysis and discussion of code mixing is rooted in a Bakhtinian framework which views language as heteroglossic (Bakhtin 1981) and which problematises the view, dominant among participants, of languages as stable and discrete codes. The particular interest of this data is precisely that the participants voice a language ideol- ogy which posits an ideal Russian separate and distinct from an ideal English, both of which should be protected from the contamination of local or global features; but their linguistic behaviours illustrate a more complex set of practices. Why do they break their own rules? 1 “Our Languages: Who in Ireland speaks and understands Russian? An investigation into cultural and linguistic diversity” is a research project based in the Departmnet of Russian and Slavonic Studies (TCD), and is funded by the IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences); see http://www.tcd.ie/Russian/our- languages/sociolinguistic-survey/

Transcript of S. Smyth EXCHANGING WORDS2.2. English-language proficiency Some participants were comfortable in...

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Slavica Helsingiensia 40 Instrumentarium of Linguistics

Sociolinguistic Approaches to Non-Standard Russian, Helsinki, 2010 A. Mustajoki, E. Protassova, N. Vakhtin (eds.)

329

S. Smyth

EXCHANGING WORDS

В статье исследуются слова и выражения английского языка, ставшие частью бытового русского языка, на котором сегодня говорят в Ирландии. На основе данных, собранных во время групповых интервью с восемью фокус-группами в 2009 г., рассматриваются случаи включения английских слов, фраз и предложений в русскоязычные дискуссии. Предложив теоретические рамки анализа дискуссии, автор учитывает языковой репер-туар и языковую идеологию говорящих, а затем выясняет, какова мотивация к смеше-нию кодов для тех, кто считает смешение языковым грехом, как языковые практики участников отражают их отношения с принимающим англоговорящим обществом и с другими русскоговорящими в Ирландии. Выясняется, что участники прибегают к сме-шению кодов, чтобы проблематизировать доминирующие понятия англо- или русско-говорящего миров, в которых они находятся одновременно (в данном сообществе и в обществе извне). Смешение кодов является и стратегией, и необходимым следствием этого процесса. This article investigates the English-language words and expressions that have gained cur-rency in the Russian spoken in Ireland today. The article draws on the data collected in eight focus groups bringing together Russian speakers in Ireland in 2009 and asks what the discuss-ants are doing when they embed English words, phrases or sentences in Russian-language discussions.1 Having contextualised the discussion in a theoretical framework, I discuss the participants’ language repertoires and language ideology before asking: what needs motivate code mixing in a population who consider it a linguistic transgression? how do participants’ language practices reflect their relations with the English-speaking host community and with other speakers of Russian in Ireland? I conclude that discussants deploy code mixing to prob-lematise the hegemonic conceits of the English- and/or the Russian-speaking worlds they in-habit. With a foot in each lingustic and sociocultural camp – the English-speaking world out-side the room and the Russian-speaking discussion within the room – participants renegotiate their relations with each of those two worlds, and reconfigure those two worlds’ relations to one another. Code mixing is both a strategy in this process and a necessary consequence of it. 1. Theory

1.1. Introduction The following analysis and discussion of code mixing is rooted in a Bakhtinian framework which views language as heteroglossic (Bakhtin 1981) and which problematises the view, dominant among participants, of languages as stable and discrete codes.

The particular interest of this data is precisely that the participants voice a language ideol-ogy which posits an ideal Russian separate and distinct from an ideal English, both of which should be protected from the contamination of local or global features; but their linguistic behaviours illustrate a more complex set of practices. Why do they break their own rules?

1 “Our Languages: Who in Ireland speaks and understands Russian? An investigation into cultural and linguistic diversity” is a research project based in the Departmnet of Russian and Slavonic Studies (TCD), and is funded by the IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences); see http://www.tcd.ie/Russian/our-languages/sociolinguistic-survey/

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Furthermore, these focus groups employ an interplay of languages and cultures whose relative statuses is not unproblematic: the Russian-language discussions were hosted in premises owned by elite educational and cultural institutions in Ireland but sustained by speakers of Russian; these speakers, in turn, occasionally embedded English-language words or segments into their Russian-language negotiation of their place in the dominant English-speaking cul-ture.2 Like a double helix the relationship of the framing language and culture to the embed-ded language and culture is always in question. Which, if either, is the dominant and which, if either, is being subverted or resisted? 1.2. Code mixing My working definition of code mixing following Woolard (2004: 73–74) is ‘an individual’s use of two or more language varieties [or languages] in the same speech event exchange’. I read code mixing as an interactional moment when the porous boundaries of one linguistic code expand to incorporate and engage with an element from another code.

It is straightforward to list what code mixing is not in these focus groups, given the con-stituency: because the matrix language was their L1 and the embedded language an L2, code mixing was not evidence of linguistic deficit, it was not a sign of the speaker’s incomplete control of the language as there was no evidence of language attrition; it was not a stepping stone on the way to L2 proficiency; nor was it a lapse of memory, effort or attention – except, perhaps, in a minority of instances, as mentioned below.

I would hypothesise, along with Dolitsky et al. (2000), that code mixing offers an extra tool in communication, allows for greater nuances of expression, that code mixing does not occur by chance, but is motivated by communicative needs, and that it is an additional lin-guistic device at the disposal of bilinguals which can ‘be used as a further dimension to the monolingual means which are available’. The question is therefore: what are the greater nuances of expression sought and/or obtained through code mixing?

With Heller (1995), I argue that code switching is a means of calling into play forms of linguistic and cultural knowledge which conventionally possess certain kinds of value. In the focus groups – I argue – mixing is a strategy deployed to explore participants’ experience of inclusion or exclusion from Irish society. In these cases, the actions effected through code mixing are at one remove from social action – they are an exploration of the rules of engage-ment in the host society, an investigation of the value afforded their repertoire of linguistic and cultural resources in the dominant culture. On the other hand, participants were accessing this knowledge as a form of social action to establish and maintain relations with one another (sometimes in moves of solidarity, and sometimes to put down or exclude).

Code switching is thus a form of language practice in which the individual draws on the entirety of their linguistic resources to accomplish conversational purpose (Heller 1995). In this article I deal only with those sections of the focus group exchanges in which mixing takes place. I treat these instances as moments when various games come into play:

1. participation in a focus group chaired by a member of a research team based in Trinity College Dublin

2. participation in a predominantly Russian-language discussion which complies with the norms of Russian-language social and verbal interaction

3. participation in Russian-language discussion framed in an English-language institu-tional context

In each of these games and in the interplay between games, English is used as a strategy which allows for a juxtaposition of old and new identities, frames of interpretation and power relations.

2 See also Bhatt’s (2008) discussion of Bhabha’s concept of the third space in relation to code switching.

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2. The focus group participants 2.1. Introduction For the main part the participants were strangers (to one another and, often, to the research team), though probably up to a half came with a partner, spouse or friend. The discussions were chaired by a member of the research team (two of whom are L1 speakers of English and two are L1 speakers of Russian); on occasions a second member of the team was in atten-dance. Participants established and negotiated relations with other group members and with the research project as the discussion ensued; participants also established and explored the boundaries between WE (Russian speakers) and THEY (host community) in the world imme-diately outside of the room, between in-group and out-group values and, as I will argue, through that very process problematised the WE-THEY and inside-outside dichotomies.

Language questions occupied a significant part of all discussions: Can one be who one wants to be in Ireland without English, or without an understanding of Irish social and cultural practices? Can one feel at home in Ireland without English? Will immigrant groups be able to sustain their cultural practices whilst also integrating into Irish society? What part does/might Russian (language and culture) play in Irish society? Where do WE and THEY find common ground? I argue that though language is set up as the frontier, the barrier (но этот языковой барьер конечно), it proves a diaphanous divide. 2.2. English-language proficiency Some participants were comfortable in English-speaking settings; many were not. There was a marked difference between Dublin-based participants and those from smaller towns – the latter often worked with and lived near other Central and East Europeans and used Russian as a lingua franca in the public, as well as private, spheres. Many of the participants lacked the English-language skills to maximize their potential in the work place and were restricted to low-level unskilled jobs with few prospects of career advancement. This exclusion from so-cial mobility was not only because of language skills – some had difficulties having their qualifications recognised.

A number of discussants commented on the problems they faced establishing and main-taining social relations with the host community because of poor language skills. They felt drawn to Irish acquaintances on the basis of shared values (по менталитету […] что-то есть общее) even if there remained differences (ну да, отличаются). This movement towards, and simultaneous distancing, is analogous to the practice of code mixing, the movement in and out of codes: it creates an in-between space, neither inside nor outside, from which to view the self as much as the other.

Their poor language skills were something that participants were keen to overcome, but they were not sure how to as (a) they worked and lived predominantly with non-English speakers and (b) the language courses that were available to them were pitched at an elemen-tary level, leaving them with no way out (Я не нашел выхода), no way of mixing socially, or indeed linguistically. 2.3. Language ideology Most of the participants articulated a linguistic ideology of fixed, discrete, divided codes. Apart from the sense of there being no ‘way out’, this is manifest in a number of ways.

First, the adage “One people, one nation, one language” which underpins the notion of bounded languages came into play in many of the discussions. It was implicit, for instance, in references to Irish language and culture as “theirs” (не говорят на своем языке), just as Rus-sian is “ours”: the use of the possessive our/their (свой) underscores the reification of lan-guage and culture; the added reference to 'native' (родной) language fuels the association be-

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tween language and one's origins (kin and place). A country without a language is problem-atic – be it Ireland or Belarus:3 similarly a language without a country creates identity prob-lems.4 One of the respondents further unpacked this understanding of an essentialist relation-ship between people, nation and language by arguing that history and nature have ordained it so: attempts to unpick the connection are doomed to failure in the long run.5

Secondly, language can be (and, by implication, should be) known “perfectly” – the con-cept of perfect language skills is expressed using variations on the phrase perfect English6 – sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in a hybrid idiom (perfect, perfect English, перфектный, в перфекте, перфектно, перфект-английский, в совершенстве):

(1) Perfect, везде хотят perfect. А этот через несколько лет и будет perfect. У них свой род-ной не будет perfect. А вот английский будет perfect. […] они уже сами не perfect владеют

(2) А для того, чтобы использовать свою специальность, ты должен иметь perfect English. Даже имея intermediаte, достаточно сложно найти работу по своей специальности…

(3) большинство, кто сюда приезжает, сами не готовы из-за языка, из-за неимения пер-фектного английского […] нужен перфектный английский […] у меня английский не перфектный, далеко не перфектный […] я могу сколько угодно еще тем, чем я сейчас занимаюсь, еще 5 лет проработаю, все равно я этот перфектный английский не получу

(4) дети, приехавшие сюда, они умеют писать, читать, в перфекте говорить по-русски (5) мы никогда не будем перфектно говорить на ирландском, британском языке […] нуж-

но говорить перфектно (6) вперед ты не можешь пойти, потому что перфект-английского все равно нет […] пер-

фект-английский, даже живя здесь, очень сложно получить, очень сложно, особенно для людей, которые старше

(7) незнание в совершенстве английского мешает нам быть тем, кем мы бы хотели быть […] Но английский должен быть в совершенстве, это как бы логично

In Ireland fluent or perfect English is perceived as a requirement to move beyond menial and unskilled employment, to have any hope of advancement, betterment or fulfilment. This per-fect English is unattainable – many believe or fear – beyond a certain age. Perfect Russian – on the other hand – is something they fear the next generation will lack: even if their children master the formal structures of the language, they lack the cultural awareness than enlivens the language – as evidenced by their difficulty understanding Russian-language jokes.7

Thirdly, this notion of a perfect uniform language is problematised by there being real and not so real speakers of a language (реальные носители английского языка); by there being a real and a not so real English (настоящий английский, не с ирландскими диалектами, а английский) – just as there are German Germans (who are from Germany) and non-German Germans who are from elsewhere;8 and there is good and not so good English.9 The English

3 S1: Как ирландский в Ирландии, то есть он как бы есть, но его нету. S2: То же самое в Белоруссии, как бы есть, но его как бы нету. 4 Мы даже не можем себя идентифицировать себя как русские, может быть, да, там араб русскоязычный, еврей русскоязычный, украинец русскоязычный, латыш, – то есть как бы все равно это уже ячейка какая-то потенциальная. 5 Но потом история повторяется, и люди возвращаются к тому, откуда мы начали […] – это естествен-но. Это исторически доказано. Я считаю свою страну... как испытательный кролик, уже прошел через это и все равно возвращается к своим традициям, своей культуре. Все равно они сохраняются. (Italics are mine, author) 6 Examples of switching are supplied in italics. Where a given word or phrase is represented more than once in the data, the frequency is supplied in brackets. 7 Мне обидно, когда дети, приехавшие сюда, они умеют писать, читать, в перфекте говорить по-русски. Но над ними в семье смеются потому, что когда в семье шутят, обычную русскую шутку они не понимают. 8 Простите, а он немец, немецкий немец. Я имею в виду не из Казахстана.

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spoken in Ireland is conceived as local, provincial (здесь – ирландский английский, свой язык тоже) – not the English spoken in the rest of the world by the rest of the world, such as, for instance, the French, or indeed the Italians.10

The range of words and indeed dialects used to exemplify the variability of English pro-nunciation is colourful and is not restricted to variations found in Ireland: as well as discrete words exemplifying Mayo, Midlands and Dublin dialects, participants also make reference to Johannesberg and London variations in pronunciation, and to the English spoken on the In-dian sub-continent. They identify a number of phonological patterns (t for th in thank-you, think, thirty; the dipthongisation of ‘i’ in Dublin’s five) as they learn to tell who is from where. They are not alone in experiencing difficulties decoding what they hear: one partici-pant reports a Mayo man’s response to London: ‘Oh it's a very good city but unfortunately nobody speaks English there’, ‘citing’ his informant in English as though to confer additional authority and validity on the judgment – one of the instances of the power play being enacted between ‘their’ dominant language and ‘the’ dominant language in Ireland.

It is not only problems with pronunciation which impede communication: participants also refer to the fact that discrete lexical items, such as refrigerator and railway station, which they were taught at school, do not appear to be comprehensible to the host community.

Discussants are universally agreed that this variability is problematic, that non-standard equates to incorrect. For some non-standard versions of English are reprehensible,11 for others regional variations are cause for discomfort;12 participants discuss the damaging psychologi-cal impact of not being able to understand and generally conclude that one’s degree of com-fort in a country depends on feeling at ease with how the language is spoken. Many discussed the psychological impact of living in a country where they are far from proficient in the dominant language and consequently feel themselves to be outsiders: they made reference to low self-esteem, to an inferiority complex which may be/is passed on to the next generation.

Whereas all the Englishes divide in their perplexing variations,13 Russian is perceived as a language which unites by virtue of its standard form,14 respondents feel drawn to other Rus-sian speakers by virtue of a shared language and culture.15

Finally, languages and the cultures they encode exist in isolation from one another;16 a per-son can only BE one: one participant likens the fate of the second generation to the fate of fresh cucumbers put in a jar of salted gherkins. They cannot fail but to become marinated.17

9 Oна сама сказала, что Midlands – это очень плохой район учиться английскому, потому что они сами говорят, что они плохо говорят. 10 мне никогда не выучить этот язык несчастный – единственное, когда ты можешь поправить свое здо-ровье внутреннее, это когда ты можешь езжать в Европу, в ту же самую Францию и говорить с францу-зами на английском языке… Например, в Италию приезжаешь, разговариваешь на английском, никаких проблем… 11 … видит человек, что ты его не понимаешь, и он впадает в такое неожиданное немножко озлобление: “Как это так? Пойдемте вот с вами в офис и разберемся, почему у вас такой английский – никакой?” 12 Слушала, как говорит Буш, а у него – Техас, очень красивый английский – а все понимаю – хорошо. Приехала в Ирландию, ничего не понимаю, Боже мой. Это был такой шок. 13 Английский здесь, в Монахане, английский где-нибудь в деревне, уже разнятся, английский ирланд-ский, английский великобританский тоже разнится. Английский континентальный тоже разнится. … здесь одна деревня не понимает другую деревню. 14 русский язык, извините, он от Карпат до Японии, он – русский язык без изменения. … в огромной России нет акцентов у людей … Да, русский объединяет столько стран. 15 здесь почему-то я все равно иду и нахожу себе людей, с которыми я могу говорить по-русски. В прин-ципе, общение ничем не отличается, те же темы, те же разговоры, я не знаю... те же места встреч. Но все равно я упрямо иду […] И все-таки очень интересная тема, почему нас тянет, хотя мы такие разные, нас объединяет язык и культура … 16 Потому что то, как я понимала 'Братьев Карамазовых', они не могли понять. 17 Потому что если взять огурец, и он будет свежим, и положить его в банку с солеными огурцами, что с ним будет? Он промаринуется, так же как и они, и будет таким же.

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Participants, many of whom came to Ireland from the FSU, were aware of language use and choice as a form of political action: they found it hard to understand the low status ac-corded to Irish in Ireland, given Ireland’s strong sense of otherness from its English-speaking neighbours;18 they believe that Irish is more widespread in Northern Ireland where it is a lan-guage of political resistance, just as Lithuanian had been in Soviet times.19 A number also comment on the power of ‘foreign’ languages to intimidate an interlocutor, whether it is the use of English in their country of origin to equalise the power relations between officials and supplicants,20 or Russian in Ireland to counter aggression or unpleasant words.21 Languages are understood to cluster into value-laden hierarchies in a multi-lingual multi-cultural space: for some migrants English will have the dominant value (английский – это самое лучшее … английский язык должен стать как бы самым главным языком), for others the values of L1 will always retain the upper hand. For nearly all participants, plurilingualism is conceived of as a trial, a problem, a tug-o’-war.

2.4. Code mixing Participants occasionally referred to code switching as a strategy. One of the participants con-ceptualises code mixing as a linguistic transgression, one which not only infringes linguistic rules, but also infringes politeness conventions by using words which may not be known to one’s interlocutor.22 One interrupts her discussion when she suddenly realises that she has used an English-language word: she mixes codes to explain the phenomenon as a change, whereby she now sometimes thinks of an English word sooner than the Russian one.23 For her it is a memory lapse or lacuna. Another accounts for her code mixing by saying that she can-not translate the phrase to deal with other companies into Russian. It is not clear what lan-guage she would be translating from. 3. Analysis of Code mixing data 3.1. Introduction It is important to stress that a number of factors make it difficult to determine the extent to which the code mixing in these focus groups is driven by the English-speaking context which Ireland provides: indeed, the Russian spoken in the RF has absorbed a considerable number of English-language lexical borrowings since the break-up of the SU (Ryazanova-Clarke 1999),

18 Сейчас странно, если они так горды своей national identity и независимостью от Англии, почему они не хотят говорить по-ирландски. […] Говорят, что только 5% ирландцев знают свой ирландский язык. […] моя подруга … у нее парень – ирландец, так он умеет больше по-литовски, чем по-ирландски. Точно. 19 Ну я как-то заметила, что в Северной Ирландии гораздо лучше говорят по-ирландски. И у меня такая теория есть, ну например, как в Литве, когда была Россия, пытались отнять литовский язык, все так учи-ли литовский язык, потому что это была какая-то резистенция, чтобы показать этим оккупантам. И мне кажется, что Северная Ирландия – тоже. 20 S1: в той стране мне не пришлось пользоваться этим языком. Даже когда приходится идти в официаль-ные инстанции, где официально приходится пользоваться тем языком, я просто перехожу на английский, это их дисциплинирует. …. S2: Тем более что они уже сами не perfect владеют. Здесь уже идут шансы, уравнивание шансов, и по-другому уже реагируют. 21 S1: Первое время они шокировали их тем, что они начинали говорить на русском, то есть человек аг-рессивно на тебя наступает, есть такой у него сразу барьер – он слышит непонятную речь. Он теряется, здесь плюс русского языка. S2: Да, вот это вот, кстати. Я просто вставлю быстро. Когда, у меня была такая ситуация: когда мне в компании начинают говорить неприятные слова, я просто начинаю перехо-дить на русский, и у человека – шок. 22 Да, я часто одергиваю даже маму, потому что, говоря с русскими людьми, она начинает вставлять анг-лийские слова. Я ей говорю: «Понимаешь, люди просто не понимают, если ты говоришь по-русски, то говори по-русски, а не смешивай два языка». 23 Лично я, имея финансовый education, [вот видите, тоже пошел change, иногда вспоминается англий-ское слово быстрее, бывает и такое]. И не так просто, потому что все равно, несмотря на то, что...

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and it also exhibits code mixing itself (Sichyova 2005). In this analysis I exclude words which are routinely included in modern dictionaries of Russian, words such as supervisor (супервайзер, 8), manager (менеджер, 14), teenager (тинэйджер, 2), weekend (уикэнд, 1) and boyfriend (бойфренд, 1). These loan words blend seamlessly into the Russian-language morphosyntactic frame. They are, however, interesting illustrations of (1) the difficulty in de-termining where mixing begins and ends: where the words supervisor and manager are modi-fied by a noun phrase (NP) (mortgage supervisor, store manager, human resources manager, production manager) the phrase tips unambiguously over from loan word into code mixing and makes one wonder about the status of other references to supervisors and mana-gers in the im-mediate discursive context; and (2) the use of mixing to refer to contested loci (who – the Irish or the Russian speakers – fill the posts of supervisor and manager? to what cultural practices do teenagers show allegiance? how do the people of Ireland spend their leisure time? who are the young walking out with?). I return to the issue of contested spaces below.

In this data most instances of code mixing occur within a single sentence (intrasentential) and most instances are either single words or two or three word NP. There are a very small number of sentences or two-part exchanges. For the main part the inserted English-language words and phrases remain distinct from the Russian-language morphosyntactic frame. In a small number of cases the inserted elements are assigned Russian-language inflectional mor-phemes.24 Conversely, in a small number of cases the morphosyntactic structure of the Rus-sian-language frame is compromised.25

In 19% of the instances of code mixing (n = 44) participants use English-language words, phrases, brief sentences and two-part exchanges to illustrate and exemplify the thrust of an argument. In these instances code mixing is deployed as a discursive strategy to explore through exemplification and enactment the speaker’s relation to

1. norms of social interaction in Ireland in general, and more specifically between speakers of English and of Russian and between different generations of Russian speakers (n = 16),

2. the mindset or system of values of the English-speaker (n = 9) 3. the variability of English (n = 15) (see above) 4. their own poor English language skills (n = 4): discussants claim that Hello!, Hi!, How

are you?, Beer, please! and Bye! is all they know/knew. 79% of the instances of embedded English-language words and NPs (n = 187) are associated with the host community’s culture and way of doing things. They name – and by naming in-voke – the people, places, and practices which have presented themselves as opportunities or obstacles to making Ireland a space where the speakers feel at ease. 3.2. Semantic domains The switches draw on a shared experience of social practices and values in late XX and early XXI-century Ireland, none of the embedded English-language words refers to participants’ ‘previous’ lives, though some are used to contrast and draw distinctions between two concepts which might be considered equivalent across the two cultures, as for instance Father Christ-mas as opposed to Дед Мороз, or A, B, C as opposed to А, Б, В; 90% of switches refer to the visible and audible public spheres of work & education, civic life, cultural & social exchange.

24 Не надо employer-у через все эти проблемы проходить, только чтобы человек получил работу […] в Лимерике есть такие районы, в которые лучше не ходить, хотя nacker-ов там нет […] вы не путайте Сан-та Клауса и не путайте Деда Мороза, это совершенно другая разница. 25 In the NP ‘об это carer benefit’ the demonstrative pronoun это is left in a neutral, default form – as it were acting as a bridge between the Russian-language preposition об and the English-language carer benefit.

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Domain % of switches

Cumulative % of switches

Number of switches

work 27% 27% 51 education 17% 44% 32 civic life (economic exchange, social welfare, public administration) 13%

57% 25

language, languages, communication 12% 69% 23 social life (socialising, networking, leisure) 12% 81% 22 cultural life, values, practices 9% 90% 17 places in Ireland 4% 8 people of/in Ireland 4% 7 living conditions 1% 1 migration 1% 1

In these domains English has maximum value: these are the loci where the participants see their opportunities for advancement and eventual self-fulfilment; these are also the loci in which the referents invoked in the switches were first encountered and encoded.

These words and phrases map the coordinates of discussants’ engagement with the host so-ciety. References to the world of work name the functions and roles which they (or the ‘other’, the host) occupy [they: car park attendant, [service area] jobs, sales, self-employed, cleaning, housekeeping; the other: human resources/HR (4) – the group of people to whom all critical decision-making in the workplace is accorded, production manager, store manager, developer, employer, reception, government jobs/civil service jobs (2)]. They also name the places or domains in which they work [fast food restaurants, IT technologies (2), food (the agri-industry sector), call centres (6), petrol station (2), Xtra Vision] or seek work [FAS (3)].

The consensus is that the Russian-speakers work hard, work well, work below their poten-tial and training; that Ireland needs them; that the local workforce is poorly educated and not fit for the more senior roles to which they are appointed. The attributes which are identified as crucial include native speaker/perfect or excellent English [and in some cases Irish] – though this can be overcome, as evidenced by the Lithuanian woman who became a member of the Garda Siochána, and unspecified skills (3). There is much discussion of employment legisla-tion and recruitment practices [work permit (3), business permission, temporary registration, not full registration]: who needs a work permit? when are spouses entitled to work? is eligi-bility to work sufficient to gain employment? or does who you know matter more? Reference is made to the hidden, unwritten codes and practices: two years of trying to get permission to work finally paid off with the intervention of a member of parliament [TD in Labour Party].

References to civic life document the process of negotiation by participants of their way through a previously unfamiliar (but now familiar – as evidenced by the switch) labyrinth of offices, documents, and procedures which regulate (and regularise) their lives in Ireland. Most focus on problems of access to information about banking procedures and practices [direct debit], about social welfare entitlements [carer benefit (2), job seekers benefit]; about access to the Irish health system [GP (2)], about the availability, or otherwise, of interpreters or as-sistance when applying for documentation or advice [full license (2); PPS number, Citizen Information (2)]; about information on the different entitlements of which migrant groups of differing status may avail [EU citizen and education fee status]. Participants also comment on the time and nervous energy it takes to find out how things work: how to pay a bill, organise internet banking [ID], obtain social welfare [payslip]. Once the income tax system has been understood, all speak with unfailing praise of the transparency of its procedures and the help-fulness of its staff, who treat all equally [tax office (2), O'Connell Street].

With regard to public policy on migration, the consensus is that the so-called two-way street [dual carriageway integration] is at present predominantly a one-way street. A number comment on the Irish welfare system needing to tighten up its safeguards in order to cope

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with the recent influx of immigrants (Lithuanians, Poles and Africans) who may want or need to abuse it.

References to education name, identify and often explain key terms in the Irish system, its hurdles and rites of passage [leaving certificate, application, progression from certificate- to diploma- and then diploma- to degree-level programmes (3)], types of schools [Educate To-gether Schools], the structure of education provision in Ireland [primary (5), secondary (school) (4), high school, degree level, Honours]. Apart from naming the programmes on which some of the participants are currently enrolled [Communication, Tourism and Travel (2), Finances, Accounting technician, Administration skills], all references to the curriculum which deploy mixing single out languages: Russian which is only taught in Transition Year, but which is examined in the Leaving Certificate; the reduced provision of English language support in the primary and post-primary sector as a result of the current economic crisis [lan-guage assistants (2)], and the exemption from Irish for children of immigrants. One partici-pant is particularly impressed at the interest in languages in Ireland from, as she puts it, con-versation exchange, to holiday survival kit, to tool to work abroad and finally to degree level. Education – whether language education or professional – provides the opportunity for ad-vancement for themselves and their children.

A small number of references are made to the people of/in Ireland using the local idiom. Discussion participants often position themselves in opposition to other groups within Irish society. The groups against which they pit themselves are the Lithuanians, Estonians and Lat-vians (who, one speaker would have it, populate Irish prisons – половина тюрем в Ирландии забита литовцами, эстонцами, латышами), migrants from Africa whose alleged mindset is characterised by the following English-language adage ‘avoid job and get as much as possible’ and that section of the Irish population who are likely to thieve – the knackers (2), according to one participant or people in some districts of Limerick, according to another. A number of participants make reference to the burden or responsibility they feel as individu-als representing a whole people – they believe that their friends, colleagues and neighbours judge all Russian-speakers on the basis of their experience of just one person; as one partici-pant put it, she feels like an ambassador. This role is problematised by the fact that many Irish people’s views of Russians are believed to have been shaped by Soviet era propaganda which fashions the nightmare scenario of an invading horde ‘Russians are coming, Russians are coming’.

1% refers to the intimate and informal contexts of the speaker’s psychological or emotional life: their experience of migration.

3.3. Do speakers require bilingual competence? In his article on the use of Hindi in English newspapers, Bhatt (2008) asks whether the inter-pretive demands of text-in-context require bilingual competence. In the majority of instances of mixing in the data from these focus groups, the speakers assume that the other members of the group, though they might not be familiar with technical terms, such as TEFL, will under-stand non-specialist language. In twenty-nine instances, however, they do supply either a translation or a gloss.

In three cases of ‘translation’ the Russian-language equivalent is supplied before the Eng-lish switch within the same utterance, in other instances the Russian-language equivalent is supplied after the switch. In one case a speaker picks up on a concept introduced by one of the other participants (the burden of responsibility she feels as a representative of the Russian language, of Russian culture in Ireland: представитель русского языка, русской культуры) and renders it in English in her response: she feels herself to be an ambassador.

Many of the switches concerned with language issues both name and exemplify their refer-ent: “Для меня, и друзей, которые здесь были, – это было первое, то есть ты immerse

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yourself into English – ныряешь просто”. This use of switching – her literal immersion into English – to refer to and enact the interplay of Russian and English in her speaker’s discursive practices is reminiscent of the example mentioned above, where a participant uses the Eng-lish-language word change to refer to the fact that she sometimes now thinks of an English-word sooner than a Russian one. In three similar cases the speaker exemplifies her mutilin-gualism in and through the use of the word multilingual.26 In this final example, the speaker ‘cites’ the hetero-image, the view of the other, on Russian – that Russian is a world language, spoken in many countries and, consequently, posh – to legitimise the continued use of Rus-sian in a predominantly English-speaking context.27

A few switched map concepts from Irish cultural realia onto Russian cultural realia: the unspecified skills (знания) needed to gain employment if one doesn’t have the personal con-tacts; the kinds of jobs, civil service jobs (любую государственную работу), for which Irish is believed to be required; one of the types of school in the town, a high school (колледж) for girls; HRM staff (все офисные служащие, human resources); and a driving license as for example (я получил права ирландские, full license, здесь). In three cases the switch draws attention to and invites interlocutors to explore the cultural differences between overlapping concepts: the different histories and functions of Santa Claus and Дед Мороз; the differently conceived social functions of Irish pubs (term which necessarily connotes alcoholic bever-ages, in the speaker’s understanding) and центр социальных инициатив (which is simply conceived of as a meeting place, a club/клуб without reference to what one might eat/drink); and the very different ways in which public health systems function and in particular how in the two systems one gains access to specialist care: in the Irish system the GP acts as first port of call and gatekeeper, a function which is alien to the Russian system.

Most, however, contain citations from or to English-speaking interlocutors and thus are rooted in the speaker’s experience of an English-speaking context. The speaker cites the words/phrase of an imagined English-language interlocutor to exemplify

1. the tendency – particularly in rural and provincial areas – to greet anyone you meet with a ‘Hel-

lo’ or a ‘Hi’. This is a custom which many commented on. For some it was perceived as intru-sive,28 for some as aggressive, a taunt,29 others come to like it – though they acknowledge that it transgresses norms of interaction in Latvia and Lithuania where it would be very differently construed.30

26 тенденция сейчас в компаниях, в multilingual, в международных, они хотят, чтобы […] если человек в состоянии воспринимать информацию на том языке, значит он – multilingual, значит он – многоязычен […] Можно я вернусь к вопросу, который мы сегодня поставили, – multilingual speaker, многоязычные, говорящие в Ирландии, и как это дает себя чувствовать в многоязычной Ирландии. 27 Потому что я считаю, что так как Россия, русский язык, на нем говорят во многих странах, и Россия, вообще поднимается, и тенденция такая – posh, чтобы на русском говорить. 28 Вы знаете, когда моя мама приехала сюда в 2003 году, и когда она шла и к ней все приставали hello, и она не говорит ни слова по-английски, она пришла домой в ужасе, у нее волосы стояли, она говорит – «они все хотят со мной говорить». Что они хотят? 29 А я заметил разницу в Атлоне еще так, как село, country едешь на машине, не знаешь человека, а он тебе – палец там: «Hi, hello» Думаешь? Ну я сейчас привык уже, 3 года. А в начале, еще там с поляком мы ехали к знакомым, так поляк смеется: «Если бы в Литве, в Польше не знаешь человека, а вот так – «Hello, hi» – остановишь, за горло: «Чего остановил? Чего ты хочешь?» По морде, и вот так. И мы смеем-ся, что вот так у нас принято. Чего ты хочешь? А тут нет – Hello, hi, и все. 30 Не знают человека и знакомятся – это очень приятно. В Литве такого нет. Если ты начинаешь знако-миться, как бы навязываешься, скажут: ага, что ты хочешь? Или ты такой, или ты сякой, или у тебя не традиционная ориентация, или у тебя что-то. Сразу плохое начинают думать. Это вот так, в Литве, в Латвии так думают. … И там много молодежи, но никаких проблем нет. Потому что я знаю, что в Литве, идешь, а там несколько ребят стоит, почти можно гарантировать, что есть проблема. Начнется что-нибудь. А здесь – нет. Если там скажут: hi, how are you? Это самое большее, что они могут сделать – hi, how are you? В Литве я бы не прошла.

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2. the tradition of maintaining contact through small talk after initial contact has been established: of talking about the weather Lovely Irish weather (Там по погоде начинают) or of enquiring where you come from (‘Люди и спрашивают – откуда, where are you from?’).

3. the Irish view of the Midlands as a cultural and social backwater: Даже сами ирландцы, мои клиенты из Ашберна, говорят, ты живешь в этом hell? Как это – ад? В аду этом?

4. an Irishman’s inability to understand standard London English: Потом приехал, мы говорим, ну как там Лондон? Oh, it’s a very good city but unfortunately nobody speaks English there, говорит. Никто по-английски не говорит.

5. an interlocutor’s attempt to goad an immigrant because of his/her poor language skills: Сначала все так – ага, не понимаешь – are you stupid? Первый вопрос, прямо. Ты дурак?

Or cites an imagined Russian-speakers words to goad the Irish:

6. А когда скажешь: Irish language is dead! Так обижаются, покраснеют и 'мертвый язык'. Обижаются.

On occasions a ‘translation’ is supplied without the original utterance being cited; the Irish have Russian words put into their mouths.31

These examples illustrate the Janus-type positioning of the discussants who face simulta-neously towards the broader English-language host community and the more narrowly con-vened meeting of Russian-speakers in the focus group. 4. What are participants doing when they mix codes?

4.1. Introduction The analysis above shows that the people, places, material objects and events named – and the utterances cited – in English are more than mere references to the host community’s realia: they are loci of cross cultural dialogue and exchange. The discussants deploy English-language linguistic forms to open up a virtual linguistic and conceptual space in which to al-low a creative interplay between their identities from their Russian-speaking past in a (for the main part) corner of the FSU, with their present identities as Russian-speakers in an English-speaking corner of Ireland, and their more immediate identities as Russian-speaking partici-pants in a Russian-speaking focus group as part of an Irish-funded research project. Though the linguistic ideology informing many of their views posits that languages are discrete and bounded codes and mixing is reprehensible, discussants’ practices exemplify the porous na-ture of the boundaries and the creative possibilities of mixing, including enabling the bridging and co-mingling of multiple sets of identities.

In this final section I focus more particularly on how participants’ language practices and strategies reflect relations between the focus group participants and between the discussants and the host community. I ask what interactional effect each language has, and examine how that is played out. I discuss how code mixing as a social action impacting on social relations within the focus group mirrors the effects of mixing in the miniature narratives participants relate about their lives in the world outside the groups.

Participants were negotiating, establishing and acting out complex sets of social roles within the groups – just as they are establishing social roles in the community. Many factors came into play in both contexts; age, gender, education, employment status, length of time in Ireland, and proficiency in English and the privileged access that gave to the host commu-nity’s culture. As mentioned above, discussants were acutely aware of language as a value laden currency in the world outside the boundaries of these Russian-speaking gatherings. In

31 Некоторые ирландцы, которые вот в leisure centre, у нас там, в бассейне, в спортзале ирландцы, узнали, что я получаю пособие, так: «А наши деньги ты получаешь» … «Как это так? Пойдемте вот с вами в офис и разберемся, почему у вас такой английский – никакой?»

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line with Dolitsky et al. (2000), I argue that code choice marks and shapes interpersonal rela-tions within, as much as outside, the groups. 4.2. Code mixing in power play within the group In one of the Dublin groups two of the males vying for privileged status dominated in a dis-cussion of how the group understood the concept of ‘integration’. Speaker 1 provides defini-tion of an integer which leads to general consternation in the group as a whole (Аудитория: Сложно. Что значит?). Speaker 2 exploits the general confusion – and consequent vulner-ability of Speaker 1 – to interpose: Try to explain it in English. Speaker 1 complies with the request and rises to the challenge: No problem, it is a limit of a sum, when a step, different steps come to the zero. It’s called determination of integral... before reverting back to Russian (Ну идея такая, что, когда вы рассматриваете какую-то функцию, комплексную функцию, а человек функция комплексная, да?). Whereupon Speaker 2, who had ‘encour-aged’ this tack, now decides that he has had enough of this discussion thread and tries to close it off (N, давайте не вдаваться в высшую математику.). In this exchange the two speakers’ choice of language is where the power play is enacted. Speaker 1 elects to switch code to take the upper hand; Speaker 2 is in a no-win situation.

This instance illustrates how code switching is used to express superiority by virtue of a superior mastery of a dominant code; to demean by virtue of the other’s inadequate mastery of a dominant code; to coerce; to acknowledge English as the authoritative code within this Russian-speaking group; to unpack the conceit that ‘outside’ is outside, and ‘inside’ is inside: ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are as problematic as bounded concepts as are languages. Each spills over into the other.

This was the only instance in which power struggles were overtly manifested in and through the choice of English during the focus groups. In most cases it was the norms of Rus-sian-language discourse in and through which status within the groups was negotiated. The following example illustrates how the choice of Russian-language speech practices is used to violate the norms of social interaction in an Irish social setting. Speaker 1 (a woman) was talking about differences between Russian and Irish interactional norms. She mentions that Russians raise their voices, whereas the Irish are soft spoken. She goes on to conclude that it is up to Russian-speakers to conform to local practices as they are visitors, they are not on home territory (мы живем у них в стране, мы живем не у себя). Speaker 2 (a male) re-sponds, with raised voice: ‘Я – у себя, я гражданин Ирландии, девушка, понятно? As with the English-language exchange discussed above, it is in the tenor of his voice and in the form of address he selects that he counters (and ironically confirms) her proposition. Through his choice and use of language he stands his ground, he knowingly flouts the discursive practices of the focus group’s host and flags his right to be an Irish citizen without compromising his ‘Russian’ discursive practices.

4.3. Code mixing in the narration of put-downs The use of one code over another and the exploitation of a code’s relative cultural value is played out time and again in the participants’ mini-narratives, tracing the ebb and flow from empowerment to disempowerment. Though on the whole the host community is perceived as tolerant of migrants’ English language skills and as able and willing to make the effort to un-derstand their English,32 one participant qualified this assessment by suggesting that some interlocutors choose not to understand,33 and a number of participants recount episodes where there is a complete breakdown in communication. In these instances they are invariably called 32 Хотя вот ирландцы, если вот плохо скажешь, а они: «Аh, your English is good». 33 Вижу, что человек не хочет меня понять, не хочет меня слышать [...] А она вот смотрит, она просто не хочет: What? What? …

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stupid (7), or made to feel stupid. It is in this situation that the most ugly and abusive scenar-ios are played out in the imaginations or memories of the participants, scenarios in which the host community hierarchies are eventually toppled and inverted: the ‘stupid migrant’ becomes a graduate with two degrees or a polyglot who speaks Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish, and understands Slovak and German whereas the local falls from his pedestal to be-come someone who only speaks a mere dialect of English, does not even know his native Irish, and cannot even do the washing up.

(1) И не надо на нас смотреть свысока – stupid. Пришел где-то самое, в какую-то ирланд-

скую среду, пришел, тебя спросили, ты сходу не понял. А он на каком-то диалекте сказал. Ты так пожимаешь плечами, хлопаешь ушами, тебе сразу привязывают – stupid, дурак, там, и все. А у этого stupid – 2 высших образования, например, а он по-суду не знает как помыть.

(2) Я сначала: 'I don't understand'. Сначала все так – ага, не понимаешь – are you stupid? Первый вопрос, прямо. Ты дурак? А я говорю: «Я дурак, что я знаю литовский, знаю русский, украинский знаю, польский знаю, понимаю словацкий, понимаю по-немецки. Английский – слабо». Я говорю: «А вы только английский, и то со своим ирландским диалектом, и своего родного ирландского не знаете, и считаете, что я еще – stupid».

(3) Ты приходишь и начинаешь с ирландцем о чем-то говорить, он на своем языке тебе говорит что-то, потом называет тебя stupid, в результате ты хватаешь комплекс непол-ноценности…

4.4. Code mixing and acts of solidarity More often than as acts of aggression, discussants use code mixing to express solidarity. All position themselves on the periphery of the host society – a periphery which is characterised by a lexicon of Russian- and English-language words, tainted, contaminated or, I would have it, enriched by the linguistic ‘other’. The English-language words embedded in Russian-language discourse draw on shared linguistic and cultural knowledge – as evidenced by how rarely a translation or gloss was felt to be required – and point to shared vulnerability and powerless-ness, particularly in those liminal zones where past and present, inside and outside, Russian-language and English-language, Irish and Soviet (or post-Soviet) are most markedly pitted against one another. However, mixing is not only evidence of solidarity within the in-group: participants talk of adopting behavioural strategies which they perceive as typical of the host community in order to establish and maintain solidarity with the Irish. So, for instance, the Irish are characterised as easy going and relaxed, as lacking a sense of urgency. One woman refers to her attempts to introduce Irish friends and neighbours to her cooking traditions, her strategy is one of gentle coaxing (Я их знакомлю с традицией, но я делаю это таким, как бы easy-going, я не настаиваю). This strategy on the one hand mirrors the behaviours she observes in the host community, and also, presumably, reflects how she would like to be treated. Another participant comments on his assimilation of local attitudes and practices by adopting the Irish response to urgent requests and enquiries “Probably tomorrow”. 4.5. Code mixing to invoke contested spaces Some of the most revealing instances of code mixing explore the contested spaces of social and cultural values and practices which separate the first generation migrant from their off-spring. Different social practices and customs impact particularly on the young: one partici-pant talks of a 12-13 year-old child’s preference for Irish parties over Russian parties. An-other participant commented on the potential for conflict in her Irish boyfriend’s reluctance to accompany her to a Russian party on the grounds that he would just be sitting there like a fool while everyone else spoke Russian and sang. It is only to be expected that teenagers and young adults would be the locus of a tug-o’-war between the linguistic and cultural values of

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their parents and that of their host community peers, and that this would to some extent im-pact on their choice of friends (indeed, a number of participants refer to young Russian-speaking men’s reluctance to get involved with Irish girls, whereas the reverse does not seem to be the case). But the potential for conflict and mixed loyalties begins at an even earlier age. One of the most contested rites of passage in Irish society is the ‘making of First Holy Com-munion’, particularly for daughters, as evidenced in the following citations:

(4) И не хочу communion. И не хочу white dress, потому что не могу понять смысла, поче-му моя дочь должна быть...

(5) они пошли communion сделали дочке, потом побежали в церковь русскую, и опять ее крестили обратно

The mothers (this topic is gendered) cannot understand what the ritual is all about as it has no equivalent in Orthodoxy, and feel ill equipped to explain to their 7-8 year old daughters why they can’t have the white dress and take part in a ceremony and celebration that appears to the children to be universal. On a related topic, one participant talks of her daughter’s having learnt to bless herself one way in school and another at home, as her grandmother had taught her (как бабушка учила). Whereas the child seems sanguine and pragmatic about these two cultural practices (“мама, там надо так, а вот дома надо так”), her mother is concerned about the possible confusion this might cause (Я думаю, что это настолько confusion для них). The mothers feel torn between wanting their children to integrate, to be part of the local community (2) (‘чтобы дети были частью общества’, ‘чтобы она почувствовала себя частью того класса, той community’), but at the same time feel responsible for transmitting the customs and traditions of their parents: they position themselves as an intermediary gen-eration between grandparents and children, as custodians of tradition – but also as facilitators in the child’s integration, which is seen as an essential prerequisite for their well-being.

Another contested space – the one where the Irish are believed to spend a considerable amount of time as it is the only locus for social activities – is the pub. There are 25 references to pubs (пабы) in the transcripts and a further 10 to bars. The word pub is so well integrated into the Irish-Russian-speak of this population, that it is indistinguishable from its morpho-syntactic context: in all instances it is declined, it trips off the tongue without hesitation or pause. The research assistant who transcribed the focus groups left it in Cyrillic – whereas she moved to the Latin script for most other examples of mixing. The pub is a space which exer-cises most of the participants, and indeed divides them into two camps – whilst also uniting them in the importance they accord it. As such this example of switching is a good illustration of how code mixing in Russian-language discourse hones in on practices which exemplify interaction within the migrant population as much as between the host community and its newcomer communities. The anti-pub faction complains of there being nowhere to go in Ire-land to meet people and socialise other than the pub; they are uncomfortable with all socialis-ing being focused around alcoholic drink; they feel it is just not for them – they do not feel comfortable in that space. For this faction, their not wanting to go to pubs leaves them on a social margin, from which they can see no way out. Whereas the pro-pub faction argue that that is where you can socialise with colleagues and get to know them as friends, that is where you can meet new people, that is where you can escape from being alone and isolated, you can perfect your English and even join in the music-making. For this faction, the pub is where you integrate.

In one of Dublin groups it was posited that Irish society is a caste-ridden society in which each caste protects the interests of its own. It is not only incomers who are excluded;34 and the

34 А то, что касается юриспруденции и медицины, – это кастовое, это практически было 3 профессии, священник, врач и юрист, это были больше статусные профессии, которые передавались по наследству. И эти традиции остались. Поэтому закрытость, кастовость, она ощущается.

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exclusion is effected in the most charming and charismatic way.35 As the focus groups gather momentum, the fault lines in the Russian-speaking community play themselves out. As one participant signals,36 the Russian-speaking diaspora is characterised by its diversity: in terms of race and ethnos, in terms of experience, fears, problems, opportunities, and in terms of hav-ing (or not having) somewhere to return. The only thing that unites them is language. The unitary Russian-speaking in- (or is it out-) group, predicated on a shared language, people and nation and as posited in the prevailing language ideology, proves as illusory, as phantasmago-ric as a homogenous Irish in-group. As most agree, once the language barrier has been over-come, what creates community is not language but shared values,37 cultural and professional interests38, a mixing and meeting of minds. 5. Concluding remarks I conclude from this analysis that mixing offers a tool in communication: both in the referen-tial and the performative functions of language. As Woolard argues (2004 87-88), the Eng-lish-language words and voices which populate the minds of participants are not theirs alone, they are appropriated in and through their interaction with the English-speaking world and deployed as a part of an ongoing process of meaning making. This process enables them to create and enact newly configured identities, changing and changed subjectivities and agen-cies within the Russian-speaking world (within and outside of the English-speaking world) as well as within the English-speaking world (within and outside the Russian-speaking commu-nity in Ireland). Code switching in these focus groups marshals accrued and accruing linguis-tic and cultural resources in of all these worlds and points to the speakers’ positioning of themselves at the intersection of many worlds. These discussants have taken the first step out of the trap of a bounded language; it remains to be seen whether the Irish will meet them half way, and as one discussant speculates, whether some day we will see a two-way exchange of words whereby code mixing will effect a change on the English spoken in Ireland: И наверное, где-то как-то вот это слияние и произойдет, поменяется и английский язык. Bibliography Bakhtin, M.M.: 1981, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Austin. Bhatt, R.M.: 2008, ‘In other words: Language mixing, identity representations, and third space’, Jour-

nal of Sociolinguistics, Vol. 12, No. 2, 177–200.

35 Они и к кастам относятся доброжелательно, вот как бы один из богатейших людей Ирландии, Денис О'Брайн, он имеет великое свойство. Вот когда в толпе с тобой разговаривает, он разговаривает, как буд-то только с тобой. Но ты не путай при этом, ты не путай, никогда не будешь братом или сватом Дениса О'Брайна. 36 Смотрите, как получается: внутри нашей русскоязычной диаспоры на данный момент есть люди, кото-рые европейцы, есть люди, которые неевропейцы, есть люди, которые совсем евроазиаты, например, таджики или кавказские народы или восточные, – и мы разные. Мы не можем сейчас найти общий язык за исключением русского языка, у нас разный experience, и у нас разные страхи, и разные проблемы, и перспективы разные, потому что у одних есть куда возвращаться, у других нет, у одних легко это сде-лать, у других невозможно. Мы разные, у нас только лишь русский язык. 37 я ищу друзей, интересных людей, у которых есть ценности. 38 Н: А что объединяет русскоязычных здесь, где вы живете?

S1: Язык объединяет S2: И общие проблемы S1: Да язык и общие проблемы S3: И еще, где мы живем, конкретно, большинство русскоговорящих – все из Прибалтики. Вот это то-же объединяет. Потому что 3 страны, это северо-западный регион, и мы как бы в своей среде. S1: Но каждый все равно ищет по себе, по менталитету, по интересам. Это объединяет. А просто – рус-ский язык позволяет.

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Dolitsky, M. & Bensimon-Choukroun, G.: 2000, ‘Introduction’, Special Issue on Codeswitching, Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1255–1257.

Heller, M.: 1995, ‘Code-switching and the Politics of Language’, Milroy, L. & Muysken, P. (eds.), One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 159–174.

Ryazanova-Clarke, L. & Wade T.: 1999, The Russian Language Today, London: Routledge. Sichyova, O.N.: 2005, ‘A note on Russian-English code switching’, World Englishes, Vol. 24, No. 4,

487–497. Woolard, K.A.: 2004, ‘Codeswitching’, Duranti, A. (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology,

Massachusetts: Blackwell, 73–94.