World Englishes, 2015

doi: 10.1111/weng.12153

0883-2919

Bilingual creativity in Russia: English-Russian language play

ALEXANDRA RIVLINA

ABSTRACT: The paper shows that English in modern Russia, like in many other Expanding Circle
countries, is predominantly used in a mix with Russian in the creative (poetic, aesthetic, imaginative, or
innovative) function in various domains. In this article, the peculiarities of the creative use of English in
the Russian context are highlighted, and the article also discusses the semantic and pragmatic aspects of
English-Russian language play, demonstrating that English can be played on either just for entertainment
or for conveying complex ideological meanings, determined by controversial attitudes to Westernization
and Englishization in Russian society.

INTRODUCTION

In the world Englishes paradigm, the study of bilingual creativity or bilinguals creativity is based on the definition given by Braj Kachru (1985: 20): those creative linguistic
processes which are the result of competence in two or more languages. It embraces
literary creativity, which focuses on literary works of bilingual writers (contact literatures), discursive creativity, which implies the creative ways language is used to affect
social change (Bolton & Jones 2010: 454), and linguistic creativity, or creative language per se, connected with the creative manipulation of linguistic forms from different
languages. An overview of research on various aspects of creativity, linguistic creativity,
and bilingual creativity is provided in numerous publications (Hoffer 2002; Carter 2004;
Bolton 2010; Pitzl 2012), including those which deal with bilingual creativity involving
code-switching and code-mixing (Kachru 2006; Martin 2008; Dimova 2012; Bhatia &
Ritchie 2013). The significance of the topic of bilingual creativity for world Englishes
research was highlighted in a special issue of World Englishes 29(4) in 2010. This topic
is of particular importance for the Expanding Circle countries, because, as some linguists
argue, in the countries where the local language is almost exclusively used as a means of
communication, but the knowledge of English is sufficiently widespread and appreciated,
the situation is ideal for English to be expected to occur in juxtaposition with the local
language and mainly for creative practices such as bilingual punning (Stefanowitsch 2002:
73). As new countries make their way into the Expanding Circle of English, new contexts
for linguistic creativity emerge, revealing important similarities as well as differences in
bilingual creativity patterns and adding to the general understanding of this phenomenon.
By the turn of the 21st century, Russia is considered to have established its place in
the Expanding Circle of English. A special issue of World Englishes 24(4) on Russian
Englishes in 2005 was a strong endorsement for this acceptance. However, compared
with many other Expanding Circle of English regions, English in Russia remains an
National Research University Higher School of Economics School of Foreign Languages, Department of English
for Social Sciences, 20, Masnitskaia, Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: rivlina@mail.ru

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under-researched area of world Englishes both inside and outside the country. Overall,
Russia is described as being on the remote periphery of the Expanding Circle continuum
due to a restricted range of functions, international mostly (Proshina 2007: 80). Intranationally, English is notable mainly in an instrumental function in the sphere of education,
being the primary foreign language taught as a subject at all levels. The lesser functional
spread of English in Russia than in many other Expanding Circle countries is explained
by a number of socio-historical, socio-cultural, and linguistic factors: a shorter period of
intensive English-Russian contact, a weaker (though gradually growing) economic, cultural, and political cooperation with the global English-speaking community, traditional
linguistic resistance toward the spread of foreign languages because of the importance
of the national language and national literature for the building of the Russian nation, and
the use of a different script (Cyrillic) (Ustinova 2011: 69).
At the same time no one would deny that the present-day linguistic situation in Russia
is to a large extent influenced by the intensifying contact of Russian with global English
and the Englishization of Russian is seen as one of the leading trends in a range of drastic linguistic changes caused by the complete overhaul of social, political, and economic
life of the country after the perestroika in the late 1980s, as stated in Krysin (2000),
Zemskaia (2000), Valgina (2003), Marinova (2008), Krongauz (2009), Levontina (2010),
Shaposhnikov (2010), Yudina (2010), Kazkenova (2013) and Kuzmina and Abrosimova
(2013). These and a number of other book-length research and articles published in the
1990s and 2000s highlight the major influences of English on Russian such as numerous contact-induced lexical innovations (borrowings, semantic calques, translation loans,
hybrid words, etc.), grammatical and pragmatic changes, innovations in non-verbal communication, and others. A few studies on the Englishization of Russian, focusing primarily
on borrowings from English into Russian, are available in English (Maximova 2002;
Rivlina 2005; Eddy 2007; Yelenevskaya 2008; Proshina 2010).
Regarding the use of English in Russia, linguists and ordinary speakers argue about
the existence of Russian English(es) and attitudes to what is defined as Russian English,
Russia English, Russianized English, Rus(s)lish, and Ru(n)glish are controversial, negative
for the most part (for an overview of Russian English debate, the sociolinguistic history and
basic structural properties of Russian Englishes see Proshina 2007: 8287; 2010: 299311;
Ustinova 2011; Davydova 2012: 375381). Nevertheless, as the globalization of English
continues, English is increasingly often used in Russian-based communication in the form
of English-Russian code-switching and code-mixing.1 This aspect of English-Russian interaction has received less attention so far and is at the initial stages of investigation,
dealing mainly with those spheres where bilingual Russian speakers switch regularly between Russian and English or where the domain itself entails extensive interaction with
English-language sources. This includes publications on English-Russian bilingual children in bilingual families (Chirsheva 2000), on the speech patterns of Russian teachers and
students of English (Sichyova 2005; Chirsheva 2008), on advertising in Russia (Ustinova
& Bhatia 2005; Proshina & Ustinova 2012), on modern Russian music industry, including
pop and rock-music (Eddy 2008), on fashion and glossy magazine publishing (Isaeva
2010), on some aspects of business discourse (Isakova 2005) and others (for an overview,
see Eddy 2007). It is essential that because of the narrow range of intra-national functioning
of English in Russia, fully-fledged, balanced and productive English-Russian bilingualism,
in spite of its exponential growth, remains largely an individual or group phenomenon.
The overwhelming majority of the population makes what can be treated as a periphery of

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bilingualism: their proficiency in English is limited by the basics of English learnt at school
and university, combined with the odds and ends acquired through extensive Internet use,
exposure to English-language popular culture products and international advertising, and
the code-switched speech of other bilinguals. The present-day English-Russian bilingualism of the majority of Russian citizens can be defined as minimal, passive, incipient
(Wei 2001: 67), and often truncated, that is, organized topically, on the basis of separate
activities (Higgins 2009: 15). Most of the English embedded into Russians speech is
generated by passive familiarity2 rather than by classic or prototypical code-switching,
requiring regular speaking and/or writing in English.
It is in this minimal form that English-Russian bilingualism has become a mass societal
phenomenon in Russia (Rivlina 2013) and has reached a level sufficient for a certain amount
of regular English insertions into Russian-based communication and for the appearance
of mixed English-Russian verbal products. Most of these English-Russian code-switches
and code-mixes do not entail the bilingual speech of English-Russian competent bilinguals
in specific domains, but are aimed at the general Russian-speaking public. They usually
take place in the communicative spheres where there is a need to attract the attention of
the audience and to increase the memorability of a certain lingual unit: popular literature
titles, magazine and newspaper headlines, radio and TV show titles, music groups and individual entertainers names, Russian company names, brands, and product labels, various
components of Russian linguistic cityscape, such as shop names and restaurant names,
the advertising of Russian products and services, and others. For instance, quite a number
of popular fiction and non-fiction books published during the last decade in Russia employ
English or English-Russian code-switching and code-mixing in their titles3 (see Table 1).
In fiction and in many other domains in Russia today, there are hundreds of similar
English-Russian mixes, the creation of which would be impossible without the assumption
that they will be understood and appreciated by the majority of the Russian public and will
fulfill their intended functions. The main function performed by English in these contexts
is the creative (poetic, aesthetic, imaginative, or innovative) function:4 due to its relative
novelty and otherness, English is used as an additional linguistic tool to create unusual
words and expressions, to intrigue, to impress and to entertain the reader/ the customer.
Officially, the use of foreign languages in Russia is restricted by a special law On
the state language of the Russian Federation adopted in 2005 (Rossiyskaia Gazeta
2005). According to it, Russian is the only language used for official matters, for federal
and municipal printed media, radio and television. However, the law makes certain
reservations relating to the use of foreign words that have no equivalents in Russian
(clause 1, paragraph 6) and to the use of registered trademarks, labels, and brand names
(clause 3, paragraph 3). As for the creative use of a foreign language, it is justified
alongside with the other violations of the Russian language rules, by a separate proviso
made for the contexts where it is an integral part of an artistic design (clause 3, paragraph
1, sub-paragraph 9), for example, in advertising (sub-paragraph 10).
Some aspects of the creative functioning of English in Russia in advertising have been
touched upon in Ustinova and Bhatia (2005: 500502) and in Proshina and Ustinova (2012:
4446). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that in recent years creativity involving
the use of English has become a crucial part of Russian-based discourse in various domains
beyond the well-documented sphere of advertising; therefore, it calls for a more in-depth
analysis of the topic. This approach will help expand the research agenda in regard to
the investigation of the status of English in Russia and the study of bilingual creativity

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Table 1. Russian book titles employing English

First published
in (year)

Book title

Author

Publisher

Success []
/ Success [uspekh] v
bolshom gorode / Success
[success] in the big city
Sex :
self-made
woman / Sex v bolshoi
politike: Samouchitel
self-made woman / Sex in the
big politics: A self-study book
for a self-made woman
less:
/
Dukhless: Povest o
nenastoiaschem cheloveke /
Soulless: A novel about a fake
man
The :
/ The
Tolki: Povest o
nenastoiaschei lubvi / The
Bimbos: A novel about a fake
love
N, Who is
. . . / Brachnyi koNtrakt, ili
Who is khu . . . / Marriage
contract, or Who is who . . .
kreiza / Moia kreiza / My
craziness
Generation / Generation P
S.N.U.F.F.
Batman Apollo
Casual. / Casual.
Povsednevnoe (meaning
casual)
off/on / Pro luboff/on /
About love
Z ,
/
Zamuzh za millionera, ili Brak
vysshego sorta / How to marry
a millionaire, or Marriage of
superior quality

Khakamada, Irina

Moscow: AST,
Astrel, Kharvest.

2008

Khakamada, Irina

Moscow: Novaia
gazeta, Knizhnyi
klub.

2006

Minaev, Sergei

Moscow: AST,
Tranzitkniga.

2006

Minaev, Sergei

Moscow: AST,
Astrel, Kharvest.

2008

Ogorodnikova,
Tatiana

Moscow:
Tsentrpoligraf.

2006

Pasternak, Arkadii

Moscow: Zebra E.

2005

Pelevin, Viktor
Pelevin, Viktor
Pelevin, Viktor
Robski, Oksana

Moscow: Vagrius.
Moscow: Eksmo.
Moscow: Eksmo.
Moscow: Rosman,
R-Plus.

2003
2011
2013
2005

Robski, Oksana

Moscow: Rosman,
R-Plus.
Moscow: AST,
Astrel.

2006


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in the Expanding Circle of English. We aim (i) to outline the main formal patterns of
English-Russian linguistic creativity, emphasizing those which are peculiar for Russian
interacting with English, (ii) to specify the functional (semantic and pragmatic) aspects
of English-Russian creativity, and (iii) to demonstrate how its use reveals the changing
status of English in Russia and how it contributes to the expansion of the functional range
of English, the furthering of English-Russian mass bilingualism and the development of
Russia(n) English(es).

BILINGUAL CREATIVITY AND LANGUAGE PLAY

Both linguistic creativity in general and bilingual linguistic creativity can be treated in a
broad way and in a narrow way. Treated broadly, in a Chomskyan understanding of the term,
linguistic creativity applies to the normal use of language (Chomsky 2006: 88), implying
the capacity to generate an infinite number of rule-governed language choices which
are for the most part new to both speaker and listener and yet are readily understood by
both (Carter 2004: 77). In the more traditional narrow sense, linguistic creativity amounts
to inventiveness in form, deviation and foregrounding, the departure from what is
expected in language (Wales 2001: 90), the breaking, re-forming, and transforming of
established patterns, curious manipulation of language (Maynard 2007: 3), a marked
breaking or bending of rules and norms of language, including a deliberate play with
its forms and potential for meaning (Carter 2004: 9). Linguistic creativity in bilingual
speech is also seen by different researchers either in a broad way or in a narrow way.
Some of them apply the term linguistic creativity to all types of linguistic innovations
and deviations induced by language contact, including code-switching, code-mixing, and
borrowing (DSouza 2001; Yunik 2001: 162163; Pitzl 2012). In this paper, the term
linguistic creativity in regard to bilingual speech is used in the narrow sense as the
novelty and inventiveness of verbal outcomes of language contact, primarily, for aesthetic
purposes, that is, for the intrinsic pleasure obtained from the recreation of new words
or meanings from familiar patterns (Carter 2004: 20). Since the emphasis in creative
language use is placed on the innovative form of the utterance, bilingual speech can be
defined as creative when a mixed form is deliberately foregrounded and highlighted, in
other words, played on.
Linguistic creativity is closely interconnected with the notion of language play and the
so-called ludic or playful function is defined as a sub-type of the creative function, with
special emphasis placed on fun, amusement, and entertainment in language manipulation
(Zemskaia et al. 1994: 172173). The definitions of language play are almost identical to
those of linguistic creativity in general: bending and breaking the rules of the language
(Crystal 1998: 1), linguistic irregularity (or singularity) [ . . . ] deliberately created by
a speaker (a writer) (Sannikov 2002: 23), the use of language in innovative ways for
amusement (Apte 2001: 277). It should be noted that this phenomenon is sometimes
referred to as speech play (Apte 2001), the term which emphasizes the fact that creative
manipulations take place in peoples speech. However, most linguists stick to the traditional
term language play, arguing that it cannot but be based on speakers knowledge of the
language system and the norms of language use (Sannikov 2002: 15). Another term often
used interchangeably with language play is word play, which is slightly inaccurate,
because [a]ny aspect of linguistic structure is available to become the focus of language

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play (Crystal 1998: 9), including the pronunciation, the writing system, the grammar, the
vocabulary, the patterns of spoken and written discourse.
The notion of language play, though widely used in research on linguistic creativity
and bilingual creativity in particular, does not often make a topic of independent research
outside the spheres of stylistics and literary studies. In Russian linguistics, however, language play has come to the forefront recently with a number of publications dealing with
language play in such domains as Russian printed media, advertising, modern fiction,
and informal everyday speech (Zemskaia et al. 1994; Sannikov 2002, 2005; Iliasova &
Amiri 2009). Iliasova and Amiri (2009: 28) maintain that language play has become
one of the most popular terms in modern Russian language studies. The interest in this
topic is explained by a drastic increase in language play in Russian discourse in various
domains as an aftermath of the transformations that the Russian society underwent in the
1990s: the general democratization of social climate and increase in personal freedom
generated what the researchers describe as a verbal freedomfest (Zemskaia 2000: 14)
and a linguistic carnivalization of communication (Kazkenova 2013: 172). Playing on
foreign-languageness (Iliasova & Amiri 2009: 58), English in particular, is addressed in
these publications as one of the most significant tendencies in linguistic creativity in modern Russian (Iliasova & Amiri 2009: 5662, 110115, 164; Kazkenova 2013: 136137,
172175).
The significance of language play analysis for language theorizing is emphasized by
Crystal, who maintains that [l]udic language should be at the heart of any thinking we do
about linguistic issues (Crystal 1998: 1), since it helps recognize the rules of the language
which are being broken. It can be argued that the in-depth analysis of English-Russian
language play will be essential for the understanding of the English-Russian interaction in
general.
METHODOLOGY

This paper is part of an on-going investigation of the Englishization of Russian in the last
decade. The data which have been collected since 2004 from various sources, such as local
advertising, brands and labels, mass media discourse, the linguistic landscape, popular
culture products, including popular music and popular fiction, online communication and
everyday interactions testify to the pervasiveness and the increase in the frequency of
various mixed English-Russian language play techniques.
A corpus of over 100 of the most representative examples formed the basis of the
study, focusing on those spheres where, as the data suggest, the incidence of EnglishRussian language play is among the highest today. The data from advertising, for which
bilingual language play is most typical, were excluded because, first, English-Russian
interaction in this domain has been investigated elsewhere (Ustinova & Bhatia 2005:
500502; Proshina & Ustinova 2012: 4446) and, second, because English in advertising,
including advertising in Russia, is exploited primarily for its positive connotations, which
have been well documented in world Englishes (see the overview in Bhatia & Ritchie 2013).
The three groups of examples, which were selected for this paper with the intention of a
more comprehensive description of the formal and functional aspects of English-Russian
language play include popular fiction and non-fiction titles (Table 1), linguistic landscape
units, such as shop names and restaurant names (Table 2), and entertaining TV show titles
(Table 3). The rationale behind this choice is that the primary consumer of the texts in

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Table 2. Russian linguistic landscape units employing English

Name of the place/event

Type of the place/event

Source (the Internet site)

The / The Sad / The Garden

OK-DOK / OKI-DOKI /
okey-dokey
TERRITORI
Isterika! / Hysterics!
Zavarka / Tea leaves (or, tea
brew)
GOOD / BiGOODi /
Hair-rollers (in Russian,
, /bIgudI/)
-H / KAM-IN / Fireplace
(in Russian, , /kamIn/)

restaurant
cafe

http://ginza.ru/restaurant/The_Sad
http://oki-doki.com

theater festival
karaoke-bar
tea-shop

http://territoryfest.ru
http://isterika.ru/flash/index.html
http://zavarkatea.ru

hairdressers accessories shop

http://www.bigoodi.ru

shop of fireplaces

http://kam-in.ru/kaminy

Table 3. Russian TV show titles employing English

Title of the show

TV channel

Source (the Internet site)

H Russia / Nasha Russia /

Our Russia
Comedy Club
Comedy Woman
.net / Durnushek.net /
There are no ugly girls
.net / Tain.net / There are no
secrets
Yesterday Live
The / The Den / The Day
PRO- / PRO-review /
About (or, Professional)
Review
PRO / PROTURISM /
About (or, Professional)
Tourism

TNT

http://nasha-russia.ru

TNT
TNT
TNT

http://comedyclub.tnt-online.ru
http://comedywoman.tnt-online.ru
http://tnt-online.ru/Durnushek-Net

MTV

http://.net

ORT
RBC
MuzTV

http://yesterdaylive.ru
http://rbctv.rbc.ru/archive/the_den
http://muz-tv.ru/look/768

Russia-24

http://www.kasterova.ru/proturizm

these contexts is the average Russian speaker with no special background knowledge of
English required.
Regarding the linguistic landscape examples in Table 2, most of them were collected in
Moscow, though a very similar corpus was compiled by Proshina and Ustinova (2012) in
smaller cities and towns in the Far East of Russia; thus, the bilingual creativity patterns seem
to be universal for linguistic landscapes in different regions of Russia. As for the TV show
titles, all of them were picked from TV guides of the largest Russian broadcasting companies (except for the MTV and MuzTV, whose audiences are smaller, but which are hugely
popular among younger Russians) with national coverage. One of the criteria for including
the examples into the corpus was the opportunity to track them in the Internet (the names
and titles in Tables 2 and 3 are accompanied by their Internet addresses, accessed in 2013;
all the addresses include the names and titles discussed) to provide the verification of data.

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Five major formal types of English-Russian language play distinguished on the basis of
this corpus will be discussed and the similarities with the bilingual creativity patterns
in some other Outer and Expanding Circle countries, as well as certain peculiarities of
English-Russian language play devices, will be highlighted where relevant. Several examples analyzed in the aforementioned publications on language play in Russian will
be also quoted to support the discussion. The formal analysis of English-Russian language
play, which is the primary focus of the study, will be followed by a brief summary of the
major semantic and pragmatic implications of the examples discussed in the article. The
significance of English-Russian language play in regard to the changing status of English
in Russia will be addressed in the final part of the article.
ENGLISH-RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PLAY: FORMAL ANALYSIS

English-Russian linguistic creativity today is manifested by the following major techniques

of bilingual language play: (i) RomanCyrillic writing system hybridization and script shift;
(ii) English-Russian punning; (iii) hybridization of English and Russian morphemes; (iv)
English-Russian rhyming; and (v) the deliberate distortion and excessive Russification of
English.
Writing system hybridization and script shift
In spite of the primacy of spoken language and the secondary role attributed to reading and
writing in bilingualism research, in many Expanding Circle countries, including Russia,
bilingual creativity is manifested first and foremost in written speech. Creativity at the
script level is widely reported in advertising (Hoffer 2002; Bhatia & Ritchie 2013: 573
577) and in many other domains in the Expanding Circle countries, where the English
writing system is used creatively for practical reasons, for fun, to assert identity, and so
on (Bassetti 2013: 657), especially in those languages whose scripts are non-Roman.
It can be argued that in Russia, the fact that English is acquired primarily through the
formal system of education is partly responsible for the wide spread of English-Russian
graphic creativity: though not many Russians actually speak English, practically all of
them are familiar with the English alphabet. In other words, though not many Russians
are proficient bilinguals, almost all of them are biscriptals (Bassetti 2013: 652), that is,
they know both Russian and English writing systems represented by Cyrillic and Roman
scripts.5 One more factor that promotes mass biscriptal knowledge in Russia, like in
many other Expanding Circle countries, is the need to use the Roman script in computermediated and other electronic forms of communication when keyboards with local scripts
are unavailable (the role of insufficient access to Cyrillic keyboards in the 1980s-1990s
in the emergence of inventive Russian-English transliterations and the development of
Rus(s)lish/Ru(n)glish is investigated in Ivleva 2005).
In the ways the English writing system is creatively manipulated in non-English contexts
there are certain similarities, as well as peculiarities which depend on the writing systems of
the languages with which it interacts. The creative juxtaposition of Roman and non-Roman
scripts through code-switching and code-mixing in written discourse is universal, reported
in different language combinations with English. Russian is no exception to this practice:
consider the examples of English-Russian code-switching and code-mixing from Table 1,
such as the book titles Success [] / Success [uspekh] v bolshom

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gorode / Success [success] in the big city or less / Dukhless / Soulless. Peculiar for
English-Russian interaction is widespread creative grapho-hybridization through separate
grapheme substitution, as in the titles N . . . / Brachnyi koNtrakt . . . /
Marriage contract . . . or Z . . . / Zamuzh za millionera . . . / How to
marry a millionaire . . . This technique is based on the play on similarities and differences
between Roman and Cyrillic scripts. Both English and Russian writing systems belong
to so-called alphabetic writing systems with graphemes representing phonemes, and there
are certain grapheme-phoneme correspondences which allow Russian-English (CyrillicRoman) substitutions. The fact is, some Cyrillic graphemes are unique, for example, <>
or <>, while others, such as <o>, <a>, <>, <e>, are homographic with or at least
similar to the Roman script, especially as capital letters. Besides, there are Roman letters,
which differ graphically from the Cyrillic script, but correspond to similar phonemes,
for example, the grapheme <n> renders the sound /n/ similar to the sound rendered in
Russian by the Cyrillic letter <>, and the grapheme <z> the sound /z/ similar to the
sound rendered in Russian by <>. These Roman graphemes can be easily embedded into
Russian words to substitute their Cyrillic counterparts as the markers or tokens of English in
Russian written speech without destroying the phonemic structure of the Russian word (cf.:
N , contract; z , to marry). The opposite pattern
of letter manipulation involves the use of English words with unique Cyrillic graphemes
embedded. For example, a theatre festival in Moscow is titled TERRITORI, with the
English word territory supplemented by the Russian feminine ending <->, creating an
eye-catching graphic effect in contrast with the English capital letters <R> in this word.
There are also cases when the end result of grapho-hybridization is difficult to interpret as
either English or Russian: for example, in the name of the cafe OK-DOK, okey-dokey
one letter is obviously from the Roman script, <d>, and one from the Cyrillic script, <>,
while the rest, being homographic in Cyrillic and Roman scripts, may be either of the two.
Thus, the whole graphic mix may be interpreted as either English imbedded into Russian,
or Russian embedded into English, or, probably, both, blurring the distinction between the
languages.6
It is pertinent to note that the Russian writing system is phonologically transparent
(Bassetti 2013: 650), which means that grapheme-phoneme correspondences in Russian are
almost one-to-one and quite clear. This peculiarity makes separate grapheme substitution
one of the most natural and elementary techniques of English-Russian language play,
available to Russian speakers with different levels of English-Russian bilingualism, even
if limited by biscriptalism only. Another widespread mode of graphic creativity or script
shift is the nonce transcription/transliteration of Russian lexical units into English, which
is used not for the purpose of lexical borrowing, as commonly practiced, but creatively,
often playfully. For instance, it is widespread practice when Russian shops, restaurants,
companies and so on, have Russian names transliterated into English, for example, the
Moscow karaoke-bar Isterika!, Hysterics! or a shop selling tea Zavarka (zavarka in
Russian means either tea leaves or tea brew). This is a bilingual creativity technique
common for many languages interacting with English in the Expanding Circle countries:
analyzing transliterations in Japanese linguistic landscape as one of the idiosyncrasies of
English-Japanese interaction, Backhaus (2007: 116130) claims that from a formal point
of view such terms look English, but functionally make sense only when read as Japanese.
Similarly, we can state that words like Isterika!, though written in the Roman script, are
not English: they are supposed to be read in Russian to be understood. The creativity of

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such transliterations is based on a deliberate playful juxtaposition or even a clash of the

Russian content with the English graphic form. Being aimed at people who speak Russian,
they refer to Russian speakers biscriptal knowledge, rather than bilingual knowledge, and
to their skills of quick Russian-English and English-Russian transliteration.7
Russian linguists who investigate the Englishization of Russian also point out some
other less widely used techniques of English-Russian creative graphic mixes through
letter substitution. For example, some Russian computer users resort to deliberate RomanCyrillic computer keyboard switch confusion, or keyboard calques (Marinova 2008: 60).
This technique is based on the correspondence of each Roman letter with a certain Cyrillic
letter on the key buttons in the standard QWERTY (in Russian, H) computer
keyboard layout. So, in order to create an unusual word, for example, an unusual Internet
nickname, Russians sometimes use its Roman letter-by-letter substitute, as if the keyboard
switch is confused. For instance, a Russian name may be substituted by Atlz, since the
button for the Cyrillic letter <> corresponds with the Roman <a>, Cyrillic <> with
Roman <t>, and so on. Or, vice versa, instead of the rather common English insertion pls
(please) Russian Internet users may print its Cyrillic keyboard letter-by-letter substitute
, bye is turned into , PS into , and so on (Marinova 2008: 61). Modern
computer programs are supposed to correct this forgotten switch mistake automatically;
hence, its deliberate use is seen as a language play device.
To conclude this part of the paper, it should be mentioned that many publications on
language play in Russia maintain that English is increasingly often played on for its graphic
otherness against the Russian/Cyrillic background because, in general, the significance
of visual components in modern communication increases. Thus, English forms, be it
phrases, words, or separate graphemes, are often employed just for their visual symbolism
(Kazkenova 2013: 172) and are perceived by local/Russian speakers not as verbal units,
but as pictures or icons performing decorative or symbolic functions.

English-Russian punning
Pun, a subtype of word play or paronomasia which implies foregrounded lexical ambiguity (Wales 2001: 326), is another mode of linguistic creativity universal for the Outer and
Expanding Circle contexts and widely reported in bilingual speech as bilingual punning
(Hoffer 2002; Stefanowitsch 2002). In bilingual punning, ambiguity is based on the homophony of words, morphemes, or syllables in the juxtaposed languages, which invokes
additional meanings in code-switched or code-mixed verbal products.
In English-Russian punning, the script shift from Cyrillic to Roman is often used today
to bring out the components homophonous in Russian and English, the language play
technique often emphasized by additional graphic means such as letter capitalization or
color difference. For example, in the name of a hairdressers accessories shop GOOD,
the Russian word , /bu`d/, meaning hair-rollers, is graphically manipulated to
emphasize the middle part of the word <-->, /-ud-/, homophonous with the English
word good, which is supposed to bring in additional positive meaning. Another technique
is the division of a Russian word into parts homophonous with English: for example, the
name of one of the shops selling fireplaces is -H, playing on the homophony of
the Russian word , /ka`mn/, fireplace and the English phrase come in, known to
most Russians from their school English course.

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Interestingly, some of the English-Russian puns become conventionalized and are reproduced in different contexts. For instance, today there are over a dozen of rubrics in
Russian printed or electronic media, or radio and TV show titles which employ the homophony of the Russian preposition ,/pro/, about, on something and the English word
pro (professional), both meanings combined in the mix: for example, PRO-/PROobzor, meaning About + Professional Review or PRO/PROTURIZM, meaning
About + Professional Tourism. Another regularly reproduced English-Russian pun plays
on the homophony of the Russian word m, net, no and the Internet term .net. For
example, in the title of the TV show on beauty tips and makeovers .net/ Durnushek.net, the Russian word means ugly girls, and the whole mix denotes,
roughly, there are no ugly girls; in another TV show title .net/Tain.net the Russian
noun denotes secrets, mysteries, and the whole mix conveys the meaning there are no
secrets. The fact is, this English-Russian conventionalized pun is widespread primarily in
the Russian Internet (cf. a medical Russian Internet site http://gepatitu.net, where the first
part is the transliterated Russian word for hepatitis, with the whole construction meaning
no to hepatitis).8 In contexts outside the Internet domain, the linguistic creativity of this
pattern is enhanced by evoking associations with the Internet discourse.
In addition to English-Russian bilingual puns proper, there are a number of so-called
near-pun bilingual word-play devices involving switching into or mixing with English.
For instance, a widely known and used in colloquial speech English-Russian mixed phrase
who is , used in the book title N, Who is . . . / Brachnyi
koNtrakt, ili Who is khu . . . / Marriage contract, or Who is who . . . can be characterized
as an example of a double entendre, a figure of speech in which lexical ambiguity is
devised to create a risque effect: the Russian transliteration of who, , pronounced as
/hu:/, is partially homophonous with a taboo Russian invective, which generates derisive
connotations in this English-Russian mix.
Another near-pun bilingual device is the play on intertextual references, quotations,
and allusions, echoing various prior English-language texts, which can be referred to as
bilingual intertextual puns (Maynard 2007: 155). In language play studies, it is sometimes
argued that any insertion based on borrowing from a prior text creates a special stylistic
effect, because it forms a certain double plane, subtext or additional implications caused
by its juxtaposition with the new context, the meaning of the quotation being re-examined
and transformed under the influence of the new textual environment (Iliasova and Amiri
2009: 226; 245246). The effect is increased if it involves the juxtaposition of an English
intertextual reference with its new Russian-language environment. For example, the book
title S.N.U.F.F. by Victor Pelevin is an obvious reference to the novel Snuff by Chuck
Palahniuk, though it is not in any way explained in the book itself and needs to be
interpreted by knowledgeable readers. Moreover, S.N.U.F.F. is not a quotation, but rather a
play on English snuff: it stands for Special Newsreel / Universal Feature Film, English
being used symbolically as part of an imaginary anti-utopian world ideology. In most
cases, the references to English sources are less sophisticated and it is not unusual for
the quotations to be transformed and played on through English-Russian code-mixing and
code-switching, as in the titles of the books written by Irina Khakamada Sex
: self-made woman / Sex v bolshoi politike: Samouchitel selfmade woman / Sex in the big politics: A self-study book for a self-made woman and
Success [] / Success [uspekh] v bolshom gorode / Success
[success] in the big city. In both cases the reference is made to a book by Candace

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Bushnell and a popular TV series Sex and the city. However, formally, these mixed titles
do not exactly reproduce the original English title, but rather its translation into Russian as
/ Sex in the big city, where the word big was added because
in Russian there is only one word standing for city and town. Thus, an allusion to the
English-language source is made via its Russian translation.
Besides the formal and semantic transformations caused by Russian linguistic and cultural context, there are some other indicators of the Russianization of English in bilingual
punning: as the data demonstrate, the overwhelming majority of English words in mixed
English-Russian puns either belong to the basic English vocabulary acquired at the initial stages of English studying at school (e.g. good, come in), or to the vocabulary
shared by English and Russian, including cognates, international terms, or long established borrowings from English (e.g. pro, net, sex). Thus, we can argue that this
mode of English-Russian bilingual creativity, though gaining popularity, is still to a large
extent shaped by the restricted spread of English in Russia and minimal English-Russian
bilingualism of the majority of the Russian public.
Hybridization of English and Russian morphemes
Lexical hybridization, that is, words made of local morphemes and morphemes borrowed
from English, is widely reported in Outer and Expanding Circle countries as a common
form of bilingual creativity in the broad treatment of the term. English-Russian lexical
hybridization used in non-conventional, creative ways is widely discussed in Russian
language play research. Iliasova and Amiri (2009: 144) call such nonce hybrids linguistic
centaurs and analyze the use of the borrowed suffix <->, ing as one of the most
revealing examples of this bilingual phenomenon in modern Russian. It was introduced
into Russian together with numerous English loans, such as (meeting),
(shopping), and others, most of them being stylistically neutral. However, as the number
of such borrowings increased dramatically, the suffix has developed an independent ludic
usage and today is often attached to native Russian roots jokingly, to mock in a certain way
excessive Englishization of Russian or to express irony. For example, the word ,
puting, derived from the surname of Russian president Putin, is sometimes used jokingly
or ironically to denote various things this person typically does in politics (Iliasova &
Amiri 2009: 144).
In the narrow treatment of the term, bilingual creativity through lexical hybridization is
manifest when the morphemes are not borrowed, but are code-switched, or rather, codemixed inside a word and lexical hybridization is conflated with grapho-hybridization. For
example, in the book title less the Russian root , meaning soul, is combined
with the English suffix -less, creating a nonce blend meaning soulless. The equivalent
meaning can be rendered by the Russian adjective ; however, the author chose to
mix creatively Russian with English, the latter functioning as a symbol of Westernization,
which allegedly corrupts peoples souls. In another book title by the same author, The
/ The Tolki / The Bimbos, the emblematic use of English is even more pronounced:
since Russian does not have the category of article determination, the article in the title
performs no informative function at all (the grammatical meaning it has in English is
lost in Russian) and is used only for its symbolic value, as a pure token of Englishness,
otherness, and Americanization/Westernization.

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It should be emphasized, that grapho-hybridization, lexical hybridization, and bilingual

punning, which are distinguished as separate language play devices for the purpose of
analysis, are often used jointly in creative manipulation of English. For example, in the
book title off/on / Pro luboff/on / About love, the suffix of the Russian word
, lubov, love, being homophonous with the English off, is played on in the
nonce English-Russian blend luboff/on, invoking the idea that love can be switched off
or on like an electric appliance. Some patterns of English-Russian lexical hybridization,
similar to conventionalized puns discussed earlier, become popular and are reproduced in
different contexts: for example, the emblematic mix of a Russian noun with the English
definite article is employed in the title of the TV show The / The Den / The Day or
the name of the restaurant The / The Sad / The Garden.
Rhyming
Bilingual rhyming, based on phonemic matching of English and vernacular words, is often
used for creating an artistic effect in bilingual speech (Kachru 2006: 230231). Though
this technique is more common in oral speech, our corpus contains some examples of
English-Russian rhyming. For instance, in the title of a popular comic TV show H
Russia / Nasha Russia / Our Russia, the name of the country in English, Russia, rhymes
with the Russian word H, nasha, both words ending with the similar sound sequence
/-/. This rhyming increases the playful, humorous effect created by the clash of the
possessive determiner H, nasha, our, implying endearment and intimacy, with the
foreign name of the country, which evokes certain ironic distancing.
The deliberate distortion and excessive Russification of English
Not often considered to be a creative technique, deliberate distortion of English, including
its excessive or erroneous nativization, highlighting and exaggeration of English deficiencies, is addressed in some world Englishes research on bilingual humour, for instance,
when distorted forms of English are advertently or inadvertently used, creating a comical
persona or situation (Lee 2010).
In Russian linguistics, deliberate distortion of borrowed English words is registered as
typical for professional slang, as well as general slang and highly informal Russian speech.
Kazkenova argues that, though these registers exhibit higher rates of borrowings, borrowed
words in them are more aggressively adapted and nativized than in other registers, which
she describes as an inner defense mechanism, counterbalancing the influence of the
foreign/English language and sustaining the grammatical stability of Russian (Kazkenova
2013: 213214). Various deliberately distorted and manipulated borrowed terms, some of
them transformed to resemble similar-sounding colloquial Russian words, are reported as
the most common type of language play among Russian IT professionals: for example,
, mail, email is turned into , mylo, meaning soap or into , Emelia,
an archaic Russian male name, or , Windows into , ,
(vinda, vinduk, vindavoz), with various colloquial Russian suffixes attached to the original borrowing to make them sound like Russian words. Mechkovskaia (2009: 504506),
commenting on these and numerous similar examples, claims that the terms are distorted
and Russianized by computer users and IT professionals with the three basic purposes:
first, just for fun and relaxation in intense working environment; second, to voice the

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resistance, conscious or subconscious, to English computer terminology, since the competition between Russian IT specialists and their international/American counterparts is
strong; and third, to mock Russian computer dummies, who tend to misunderstand and
mispronounce the terms.9 She states that these additional meanings are hard to separate
and are often expressed simultaneously in Englishized Russian computer slang.
Some regular English borrowings and those deliberately distorted/Russianized coexist
in Russian speech as stylistic variants, with the distorted variant being the one stylistically
marked and expressing, in most cases, negative connotations. One of the most revealing
examples of this phenomenon is the borrowing of the English word manager, which has
two variants in modern Russian: one of them the proper borrowing , the regular
transcribed variant long assimilated by Russian and stylistically neutral, and the second
a distorted transliterated variant , with the sound // instead of //, // instead
of /e/ and the stress shifted to the second syllable. The distorted variant is used in the
contexts where negative attitudes are expressed: it mocks managers as the representatives
of a relatively new social group in Russia, who, though striving to resemble in every way
their Western counterparts, are often thought of by other Russians as not very clever or
educated.
In English-Russian mixed speech deliberate distortion and Russianization of English
can be illustrated by the title of the book kreiza / Moia kreiza / My craziness, where
kreiza is the result of a complex English-Russian language play: the English root <craz->
is as if borrowed into Russian, grammatically adapted by acquiring obligatory for Russian
gender category, marked by the feminine ending <-a>, and then transliterated back into
English as kreiza, the form which sounds very similar to the Russian slang word ,
shiza for , schizophrenia.

ENGLISH-RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PLAY: FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS

As the examples discussed in this article demonstrate, creative use of code-alteration is

rarely restricted to formal language play only, or linguistic ludism for its own sake.
Bilingual language play, as well as bilingual verbal products in general, entails various semantic and pragmatic interpretations, which cannot be conveyed through native linguistic
resources (Myers-Scotton 2002: 154; Bhatia & Ritchie 2013: 570). It should be stressed,
that various additional meanings and interpretations rendered by switching to or mixing
with English are always indexical and occasioned, in other words, they cannot be understood unless their embedding into the [ . . . ] context at hand is taken into account (Auer
2007: 8).
There are contexts where English is embedded into Russian and played on just for its
novelty and other-languageness with the primary motivation of amusing the audience,
like in many other Outer and Expanding Circle of English countries (Kachru 2006: 224).
It is used as a linguistic source of enjoyment (Crystal 1998: 1) for both sides able
to recognize, to engage in and to appreciate bilingual creativity for what it is. In oral
communication, playful throwing of English into Russian helps create a lighthearted and
relaxed conversational environment; in written communication, ludic English performs
a decorative function and contributes to what Bhatia and Ritchie (2013: 594) define
as its low-level cosmetic effects, such as eye-catching, attention-getting, or memoryfacilitating.

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In addition to this, there are numerous contexts where additional meanings are created
by contradictory indexical values attached to English and English-Russian code-switched
speech in Russian society. On the one hand, like in most other Outer and Expanding Circle
countries, English is employed as a marker of globalization, modernity, technological
advance, reliability, business efficiency, sophistication, prestige, high quality of life, and
so on (Bhatia & Ritchie 2013: 589). On the other hand, English may be employed as a tool
for critical creativity (Carter 2004: 47), to voice peoples concerns about globalization
and Westernization, preservation of unique national identity and language purity, and
other issues of language and culture contact. Play on English in Russian is often used
for criticism, irony and satire (Rivlina 2010), similar to English interacting with other
languages (cf. Higgins 2009). Interestingly, the same bilingual language play technique
can be used for different socio-psychological purposes in different contexts. For example,
the mix of a Russian noun with the English definite article, discussed earlier, can yield
different semantic implications: the hybrid English-Russian name of the restaurant The
, The Garden is supposed to invoke positive connotations and render a lighthearted
and friendly ambiance of the place, whereas in the book titled The , The Bimbos
the author uses this technique to mock and criticize young Russian women who are eager
to join the Westernized elite.
The critique of the modern Westernized way of life symbolized by English-Russian mix
in the title of Sergei Minaevs book less, Soulless is enhanced by the subtitle A novel
about a fake man, which is an allusion to a classic Soviet novel about a war hero written
in 1946 by Boris Polevoi A novel about a true man. It creates the juxtaposition of two
allusions, one to the old Soviet discourse with its connoted high moral values and another
to modern Westernized discourse, seen as the symbol of the loss of values. The subtitle of
the book The , The Bimbos is similar in its intertextual reference, A novel about a
fake love, rendering similar critical connotations.
It must be emphasized once again, that contradictory ideological meanings intertwined
with ludic connotations are often hard to separate and may co-exist in the creative manipulation of verbal products of Englishization in Russia. This semantic ambivalence is similar
to many other Outer and Expanding Circle countries, where English is employed for a
range of dual or double-voiced usages, reflecting competing discourses simultaneously
(Higgins 2009: 7, 66).
A comprehensive analysis of the functional aspect of English-Russian creative codemixing and code-switching would require a special investigation, but it can be argued
right now that no investigation limited by the frames of one domain (e.g. advertising) can
embrace all the indexical values and contextualized meanings evoked by English-Russian
language play. Thus, the present study of major English-Russian language play techniques
can be used as the basis for a future more in-depth semantic and pragmatic research on
English-induced bilingual creativity in Russia.
BILINGUAL CREATIVITY AND THE STATUS OF ENGLISH IN RUSSIA

In the contexts of the Expanding Circle countries, the status of English changes in that it
is no longer perceived by its local users as merely a foreign language to be learnt in the
formal context of education and to be used for international communication only. Even
in those countries where the existence of local varieties of English is disputed, English
is now more than simply a foreign language (Kirkpatrick 2010: 4); some linguists even

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define its unique status as a non-foreign language (Gorter 2006: 81). This drastic change
is especially evident in the creative manipulation of English.
In Russia, the analysis of English-Russian language play helps expose a number of
important new sociolinguistic realities. First, the variety and the scope of English-Russian
language play testifies to mass English-Russian bilingualism, because language play is
always based on the familiarity principle (Crystal 1998: 21), which means that playing
on foreign languageness cannot be understood and appreciated unless the audience are
familiar (at least, to a certain minimal level) with the language played on. Second, as English
is being played on, English-Russian bilingualism is sustained and further promoted. The
creative uses of English often catch on and are then reproduced and further developed
in Russian discourse increasing its Englishization. Thus, English is not only learnt as a
foreign language in formal settings in the classroom, it is also acquired through exposure,
including exposure to its numerous creative mixes with Russian, the process similar to the
natural patterns of language acquisition in native speakers. Third, the creative use of English
reveals the changes that English undergoes in the process of its localization (nativization,
indigenization, Russianization) in the Russian environment. Let us enumerate some of the
changes and idiosyncrasies which were touched upon in the article:
1. due to the minimal character of mass English-Russian bilingualism, the creative use of
English in many cases is restricted to the intrasentential level (phrases, words, separate
morphemes and even graphemes) and to a limited range of vocabulary, such as the
basic stock of English typically learnt at school or the vocabulary shared by English
and Russian and easily recognizable in both, Cyrillic and Roman, scripts (cognates,
international terms, and borrowings from English);
2. English is used predominantly in a mix with Russian, often not just switched into, but
hybridized with Russian, sometimes to the point of blurring the distinction between the
two languages;
3. formally, English embedded in Russian is adapted phonologically, grammatically, and
lexically (cf. the use of the big city instead of the city due to the lack of distinction
between city and town in Russian); and
4. semantically, English is employed to render a wide range of implications, which are
often imbued with specific socio-historical and socio-cultural connotations, reflecting
contradictory values attached to English as the symbol of globalization and Westernization and to English-Russian mixed speech in Russian discourse.
Though the existence of Russian English, even as a performance variety is still disputed
by many in Russia, it can be argued that all these peculiarities attest to the initial stages
of its formation. Further analysis of the creative use of English can help raise awareness
of Russian English and remedy the negative attitudes to it among Russian linguists and
ordinary speakers.
Regarding the factors contributing to the Englishization of Russian discourse and
bilingual language play, it is important to mention the long-standing tradition of cultural bilingualism which existed in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries:10 classical
Russian literature abounds in code-switching (mostly Russian-French, but also RussianGerman, Russian-English, etc.) and language play involving other languages (Sannikov
2005). Though language play based on bilingualism and code-switching was considerably
reduced in Russia in the 20th century due to obvious socio-historical reasons (Sannikov
2005: 11), it might have facilitated somehow the revival of traditional Russian interest in

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foreign languages after perestroika and simplified the Englishization of Russian, especially,
in the form of English-Russian language play.
Overall, Russia has established its position in the Expanding Circle of world Englishes
and, even if English remains restricted in its intra-national functioning in Russia, EnglishRussian creative interaction is most probably here to stay as an important linguistic asset.
CONCLUSION

In the world Englishes paradigm today there is a strong urge to bolster the Expanding
Circle research (Berns 2005). And it is in the contexts of the Expanding Circle countries
that the research focus is shifting today from feature-oriented description of new varieties
to the most exciting areas [ . . . ] dealing with the slippery linguistic spaces between and
within particular speech communities, where the use of English is juxtaposed with other
international, national, regional, and local languages (Bolton 2012: 33). The analysis
of present-day English-Russian interaction shows that English has become an important
addition to native Russian resources of linguistic creativity and language play well beyond
the traditionally studied sphere of advertising, especially in the form of English-Russian
code-switching and code-mixing. Though not many Russians actually speak English,
its creative use in Russian-based communication testifies to a critical mass of learners
and users (Berns 2005: 85) and contributes to further increase in English-Russian mass
bilingualism. At the same time, English-Russian critical creativity is widely used to
voice Russian peoples concerns about the issues of globalization/Westernization and to
safeguard the Russian language from excessive Englishization. It is hoped that future
research into the creative use of English in Russia in comparison with other Expanding
Circle countries will yield a more comprehensive picture of current English diffusion in
the world.
NOTES
1. Beyond the scope of this article is the discussion of different approaches to code-switching and code-mixing: the way
these terms are used in the article is linguistically oriented (rather than sociolinguistically or psycholinguistically),
which means that code-mixing will be treated as associated primarily with hybridization in bilingual speech, while
code-switching will suggest movement from one language to another. We also find umbrella terms such as codealternation and code-alteration (as in Dimova 2012), or language mixing (as in Martin 2008; Bhatia & Ritchie
2013) to be useful in those contexts where the distinction between code-switching and code-mixing is not relevant
or where the boundaries between them and other contact-induced phenomena, such as borrowings, insertions, and
others, are blurred.
2. The term belongs to Sarah Thomason (2005: 139), who defines passive familiarity as a mechanism of contactinduced change, which occurs when a speaker acquires a feature from a language that s/he understands (at least to
some extent) but has never spoken actively at all.
3. The majority of these books contain little English, if at all, except for their titles.
4. The creative function performed by English in these contexts is combined with a range of other functions, such as the
informative (descriptive, referential) function, the expressive function, the appellative (directive, conative) function
and some others. However, the creative function dominates in the contexts chosen for investigation.
5. It is important to distinguish between writing systems and scripts in the discussion of bilingual written speech, because
one script can represent the writing systems of different languages: for example, the Roman/Latin alphabet is used
by a number of languages besides English (Spanish, German, etc.), while the Cyrillic script is shared by the majority
of Slavic languages and the languages of the former Soviet Union countries. In this paper the interaction of the
Russian/Cyrillic and the English/Roman writing systems is discussed.
6. The attempts to blur boundaries between English and the local languages are described as a phenomenon common
for many contexts of multilingual creativity, especially in popular culture (Kachru 2006: 231; Moody 2009: 189).
7. It can be argued that the decision to give a company or a shop an English name or a Russian name transliterated
into the Roman script is to a certain extent motivated by the need to simplify its further Internet search, since most

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Internet addresses are in the Roman script anyway. It should be mentioned, that Cyrillic Internet addresses were
introduced in Russia in 2010 (e.g. http://.). How this development will impact the share of English
in Russian linguistic landscape remains to be seen. However, the Russian public has already grown accustomed to
the practice of using the Roman script for their Internet activities; besides, as this paper shows, it provides additional
means of linguistic variety and creativity, English-Russian graphic hybridization being extended into the Internet (e.g.
http://.net), so, it probably will not be easily abandoned now.
8. The Russian nouns in the examples analyzed are used in different morphological forms required by different Russian
syntactic constructions with the negative particle m, net, no: the genitive case to render the meaning there are
no . . . in .net / Durnushek.net (there are no ugly girls) and .net /Tain.net (there are no secrets) and
the dative case to render the meaning no to . . . in gepatitu.net (no to hepatitis). Thus, from the point of view of
grammar, the matrix language of these mixed constructions is Russian.
9. Zemskaia, Kitaigorodskaia, and Rozanova, elaborating on Bakhtins metaphors of carnival, carnivalization and
double-voicing, describe such uses of English as speakers trying on verbal masks (Zemskaia et al. 1994: 180),
which, in cases of playing on a foreign language, may be the verbal masks of a foreigner, of a bilingual, or of an
incompetent foreign language speaker. They argue that even minimal indications of the other voice are sufficient
for the creation of a verbal mask as a specific language play device (Zemskaia et al. 1994: 180).
10. Modern code-switching research is based on the theory of codes, encoding/decoding, and switching codes
developed by Roman Jakobson, who referred as an example to the multilingual speech of the Russian aristocracy,
switching regularly from Russian into French and some other European languages (Jakobson et al. 1952: 11; AlvarezCaccamo 1998: 3031).

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(Received 8 March 2015)


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