Public information: The shifting roles of minority language news media in the Buryat territories of Russia

► I examine the historical relationship between media and imagined publics in Siberia. ► Minority language news media are developed for diverse purposes. ► Buryat media in Russia have targeted a changing minority language public. ► As language shift progresses, news’s purpose shifts from information...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language & communication 2012-04, Vol.32 (2), p.124-136
Main Author: Graber, Kathryn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Buryat
Buryat language
Communication
Information
Language
Language Planning
Language planning/policy
Language Policy
Language Shift
Mass Media
Minority languages
Multilingualism
News media
Russia
Russian
Russian language
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:► I examine the historical relationship between media and imagined publics in Siberia. ► Minority language news media are developed for diverse purposes. ► Buryat media in Russia have targeted a changing minority language public. ► As language shift progresses, news’s purpose shifts from informational to symbolic. ► The imagined Buryat public has shifted from nascent, to parallel, to a subpublic. In ‘multinational states’ such as the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russian Federation, minority language media have been developed for diverse ends. This article examines the changing roles of minority language news media over a century of language shift in the Lake Baikal region, where generations of Buryat speakers have been shifting to Russian. Drawing on archival materials and ethnographic research with media personnel and audiences, I show how linguists, journalists, and policymakers have directed minority language media practices in response to their own shifting conceptions of an existing, emergent, or contracting Buryat language public—and of media’s ideal or actual relationship to it.
ISSN:0271-5309
1873-3395
DOI:10.1016/j.langcom.2011.05.005