Социолингвистика многоязычия в протестном движении Беларуси (chapter)

What is it about?

The paper focuses on the sociolinguistics of multilingualism in the current protest actions in Belarus (2020-2021).

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Why is it important?

For historical and geopolitical reasons, Belarus is characterized by deeply rooted multilingualism, with Belarussian and Russian – among others – constantly interacting (either confrontational or in coexistence). After the collapse of the USSR, the functional distribution of Russian and Belarusian remained unbalanced, with both lan-guages obtaining a symbolic power especially in political discourse. This (im)balance of power, together with other sociolinguistic specifics of multilingualism in Belarus, consti-tute a potential resource for the linguistic manifestation of protest. In our paper, we explore how different multilingual practices of protesting reflect the current language situation in Belarus and, conversely, how the used protesting practices affect the sociolinguistic situation of the disbalanced multilingualism.