Prospects for Russian-Belarusian bilingualism: the sociolinguistic aspect

Abstract

This article is devoted to the topical issue of Russian‑Belarusian bilingualism in the post‑Soviet environment. Belarus is of particular interest not only because of the high level of russification at the time of the collapse of the USSR but also because of its close relations with Russia afterwards. Belarus is the only country in the post‑Soviet space that has legally secured the equal status of the Belarusian and Russian languages as official languages, which results in legally fixed bilingualism. However, the actual position of the two languages is not equal at all and the functional scope of the Belarusian language is still limited. The purpose of this work was to determine the current state of the language situation and to determine the prospects for bilingualism based on the language‑governing rules and the analysis of the education sector since it reacts most sensitively to to any changes in legislation pertaining to language policy and most effectively influences the formation of multilingual society. In addition, research hypotheseswere presented through the prism of political discourse, namely the rhetoric about bilingualism present in the official speeches of the President of the Republic of Belarus, A. Lukashenko).