Zustand und Perspektiven der russischen Dialekte

Despite political and social pressure on Russian regional dialects over large decades their often proclaimed death should be treated as a scientific fiction. Nevertheless, regional variants undergo active processes of change forced by extra– and intralinguistic factors. As a basis for understanding ongoing language processes, the paper first gives a description of dialect distribution and a critical overview of the linguistic principles which have been adopted to dialect differentiation in Russia. Afterwards, the focus is changed to current processes mainly described as leveling. With regard to a differentiated model of dialect competence the paper provides a complex insight into current problems of dialect use. Thereby it addresses mainly qualitative sociolinguistic approaches like accommodation theory and auditory design as seminal for future investigations of the language situations in rural and small-town Russia.