Language Policy and Planning in Russia, China and the USA through the Lens of Mass Media of the 21-st Century

Abstract

The study focuses on defining specifics of the language policy and planning in the Russian Federation, the USA, and China within the modern political discourse of the 21st century by means of exploring materials from Russian, American and Chinese media. The empirical base of the study included statistical and sociological data describing the sociolinguistic situation in the studied countries as well as materials from the latest Russian-language and English-language media which served as a source of factual and linguistic data. The authors investigated electronic publications of the following newspapers and their applications published from 2005 to April 2020: “Arguments and Facts”, “Vedomosti”, “Izvestia”, “Kommersant”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” (835 extended contexts) in the Russian Federation, “The Washington Post”, “The New York Times” (998 extended contexts) in the USA, “News.cn”, “Shanghai Daily”, “China Daily” (846 extended contexts) in China. The examination of data was carried out using corpus linguistics methods (context selection, concordance analysis and frequency study) and lexical-semantic analysis as well as contextual (distribution) method, content analysis, indicative method, BIG DATA analysis, CAWI method. Furthermore, the study employed such analysis tools as Time Traveler, Google trends, etc. The study reports current trends in the development of language policy and planning in Russia, the USA and China in the 21st century. The analysis of media content allows to outline the prospects for mutual enrichment through integrating the latest positive trends in the development of language policy for a globalizing world while preserving and maintaining the orientation towards self-identity of every country, every language and every culture.