Representatives of the Second Generation of the First Wave of Russian Emigration about the Russian Language

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine attitudes toward the Russian language among representatives of the second generation of the first wave of Russian emigration in France (1991–1992) and Canada (1995, 1998). The material is based on interview recordings published in written form in 2004, which subsequently formed the basis for the creation of the electronic corpus Russian Emigrant Speech at the Laboratory of General and Computational Lexicography, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University. The study reveals a strong and well-established connection between the preservation of the native language and immersion in the history and culture of the homeland among representatives of the second generation. It is evident that without the establishment of communication centers, the development of specialized homeland-studies literature, and the strengthening of cultural ties, the Russian language outside Russia has limited prospects for preservation and large-scale transmission.