Linguistic Portrait of Russian Descendants from Mixed Marriages in Xinjiang

This article presents the experience of creating a linguistic portrait of a descendant of Russian settlers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China. The study assesses the degree of preservation of the Russian language and identifies its principal characteristics. The research focuses on a representative case study of Ekaterina Z., a third-generation descendant from a mixed marriage, currently living in Urumqi. The analysis is based on audio recordings of Russian speech collected in Urumqi during a 2018 field expedition to the XUAR. The examination of Ekaterina Z.’s speech reveals its distinctive features and provides insights into the preservation level of Russian among third-generation Russian-speaking descendants from mixed marriages in the region. The analyzed phonetic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic features of Ekaterina's speech demonstrate significant deviations from standard Russian norms across all linguistic levels. These deviations are attributed to both the dialectal and colloquial features of the mother tongue (Russian) that Ekaterina learned in childhood and the interference under the influence of the Chinese language, the language of her country of residence, which also manifests itself at all levels of the language system. However, despite the significant deviations from the accepted standard, Ekaterina's Russian language has not become a passive resource. Her ability to communicate freely on various topics demonstrates a sufficient level of proficiency in Russian to achieve specific communication goals, which is influenced by both objective and subjective factors.

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