National-functional paradigm: increase of language capital as a goal of language policy

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.3-19.060

Marusenko Michael A.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor

St. Peterburg State University

Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University

e-mail: mamikhail@yandex.ru

The article discusses changes in linguistic ideology in the postmodern and globalization period, which led to a change in the linguistic paradigm from ethnocultural to national-functional, which arose on the basis of the developmental ideology. Language policies always have a “hidden agenda” aimed at creating language hierarchies and marginalizing language communities. In the new paradigm, the question turned out to be not only the concepts of language and languages, but also many related concepts derived from the concept of the discrete nature of a language, such as language rights, mother language, bilingualism, multilingualism, code switching, etc. The resource-oriented approach to language radically changes attitudes towards languages and language groups. Language management is viewed as an analogy of natural resource management, and language policy makers control the learning and use of languages in the same way as is done in business resource allocation models. Earlier, the spread of English was studied within the framework of the theory of language imperialism. Since the last third of the ХХ century, instead of the concept of linguistic imperialism, which had a heuristic value in the early post-colonial period, the concept of linguistic capital is used. The historical chance of the Russian Federation is the use by the absolute majority of the population of the endogenous world language. Proficiency in Russian constitutes the main share of the linguistic capital of its speakers.

Keywords: language policy, ethnocultural paradigm, national-functional paradigm, language imperialism, language capital.

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