Contemporary Russian Language: De jure and de facto

Abstract

The authors argue that the model of the language policy of the Russian Federation assumes that a single official language, Russian, functions on the territory of the country, and this is legally enshrined in the law on the official language of the Russian Federation, regulatory legal acts, and state programs. The “de facto” official Russian language is studied in Russian schools, especially in high school, in the format of the unified state examination, which destroys its holistic perception and the possibility of full proficiency. The disciplines “Elective Russian Language Courses”, “Russian Native Language”, which contribute to the in-depth study of the Russian language, often exist only on paper at school, in fact, they turn into rote learning of training materials for the Unified State Exam. The current situation in the world has particularly clearly revealed that the focus on building a consumer society in our country over the past 30 years, globalization processes in the world, the obvious existence of double standards in the behavior of both the whole state and the individual, well-developed methods of fake information etc. entail, perhaps, the most serious danger to the language — the oblivion of the codes of Russian culture. For example, advertising shamelessly exploits the expressive resources of language to increase the demand for its products. As a result of the analysis of the pain points of the existence of the Russian language in contemporary Russia, the following conclusion is made: healing from the moral ailments of modern society is possible only with the understanding that we will save the state if we save our language.

Keywords:

language policy of the Russian Federation, official Russian language, unified state examination, real level of language proficiency, advertising, codes of the Russian culture