LINGUISTIC DISCRIMINATION AND LANGUAGE ANXIETY OF KAZAKH RUSSIAN-DOMINANT SPEAKERS WITHIN A KAZAKH-SPEAKING ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Modern Kazakhstan, a bilingual (Kazakh-Russian) country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, only gained its independence in 1991 after the dissolution of the USSR. Hence, the Soviet Union intervened in Kazakhstan’s school curriculum for 60 years in the form of Russification, resulting in the majority of the urban and rural population of Northern Kazakhstan being primarily Russian speaking. Still today, much of this population does not know their ethnic language, Kazakh, and faces linguistic discrimination as a result...