English Language’s Functioning in the Student’s Microcommunity: a Case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The trilingual strategy in the context of state language policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan predetermined the research needs to specify the functioning of English language as well as its spreading, status and role in the communicative and language space of Kazakhstan. It is the purpose of the article to investigate the specified functioning of English language in the student’s micro society under the conditions of Kazakhstani polylingualism. The research is based on the concepts of sociological and interactional (social induced) communicative and theoretical sociolinguistics. The student’s microcommunity with peculiar linguistic and behavioral characteristics is meant to be the object of research. There are applied the principal empirical method of obtaining knowledge for pedagogical and sociological research that is sample-based questioning and mathematical and statistical analysis. The main results involve the analysis of the empirical data obtained during questioning. While researching the authors revealed the specifics of English language’s functioning in the student’s microcommunity that initially caused by individual and personal motivation of the native speakers. In the conclusion the authors deduce that specifics of English language’s functioning in the student’s microcommunity is determined by the unique language situation in Kazakhstan due to cooperative functioning of two powerful languages that is the Kazakh and Russian in the united communicative space. The authors state that communicative function of English language in the student’s environment at the present stage is generally realized in the academic sphere (study and science) and more rarely in the daily sphere of communication. © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved