The Urbolingua of a Kazakhstani Metropolis in the Contemporary Linguistic Situation

This article is devoted to the study of the urbolingua of the Kazakhstani megacity in the conditions of the modern language situation on the example of the city of Shymkent. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact of language policy on language competition based on an analysis of the dynamics of language choice by schoolchildren in the educational environment of Shymkent. The objective of the article is to comprehend in monitoring mode the impact of the current language policy in Kazakhstan on the real use of languages in the selected region. The choice of language of education is one of the most practical and reliable sources of data on linguistic use in the multilingual society of the megapolis, as it reflects the language policy of the state and national priorities. The materials of the study were the data from the census, the data from the Agency for statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the database of the National Center for State Standards of Education and Testing. The sources of the study were the language laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan adopted in different years, as well as the curricula of general secondary education. In addition, the empirical material of the study was the sociolinguistic data firstly introduced into scientific circulation, obtained in the course of a survey among schoolchildren of Shymkent. In the course of the study, an integrated approach was used to obtain more accurate results, combining both general and frequent scientific research methods. The results of the study show a trend towards priority use of the Kazakh language in the region. A monitoring study of the language preferences of secondary school students in the city of Shymkent seems promising from the standpoint of describing the choice of the language of instruction in the field of secondary education, as well as the degree / level of proficiency in Russian as the first and the second language, and analyzing the conditions for teaching Kazakh / Russian / English in school curricula. Monitoring the language preferences of schoolchildren in Kazakhstan depending on the region of residence is a promising sociolinguistic indicator of the effectiveness of the language policy pursued in the republic.

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