Language and Ethnic Identity as Reflected in Censuses and Regional Surveys: the Case of Buryatia

The main idea and purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis that the results of the 2020 All-Russian census compared to the 2010 census show a statistically significant increase in the emotivity coefficient, i.e., the number of people who claim an ethnic language as their mother tongue but do not actually know it. Buryat was named among the languages that, on the contrary, showed low emotivity coefficient, which might indicate a decrease in its symbolic value between 2010 and 2020. To test the hypothesis regarding the Buryat language, the authors of the article compared the data from the ‘big’ statistics (censuses) with the ‘small’ statistics – materials from regional studies on the Republic of Buryatia. The comparison revealed several differences between them. The 2020 census showed that the number of people who know the Buryat language, use it in everyday life, and consider it their mother tongue has increased. The 2020 regional survey, on the other hand, showed a sharp decline in the number of people who consider Buryat to be their mother tongue and an equally sharp increase in the number of people with a dual ethnolinguistic identity. According to the authors, this difference can be attributed to the lack of information on two or more mother tongues in the final 2020 census data. However, this information indicates new trends, hybrid ethnonyms, and an increased number of people who have not declared their ethnicity. The analysis of regional statistics also showed the similarity of today’s Buryat linguistic competence with that at the end of the Soviet era and the mechanism of language shift. This mechanism consists of the redistribution of language skills within the concept of language competence itself: the gradual increase in passive skills, the decrease in active skills, and the variation in literacy skills depending on the vector of language policy in education. The research confirmed the decreased emotivity coefficient of the Buryat language; on the contrary, during the post-Soviet period, the "language-ethnicity" link is gradually being torn apart in everyday consciousness reflecting the Buryats' self-assessment of their real linguistic competence in the ethnic language.

language, ethnic identity, symbolic value of language, emotivity coefficient, mother tongue, Buryat language, linguistic competence, censuses, regional statistics