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Russian scientists to study English language change

A research laboratory of language monitoring was established at the Belgorod National Research University

MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. A research laboratory of Language Monitoring was established recently at Belgorod National Research University (BelSU), the press-office of BelSU said. The laboratory will deal with the variability of English language of UK influenced by various political, social, and economic factors. One of the priority research direction is the influence of immigrants on the English language.

According to the scientists, the current situation in the UK which attracts many new immigrants from different countries every year allows for gathering sufficient database. While adapting to the new life conditions, the immigrants do not always tend to become fully assimilated. They keep their cultural code and, therefore, inevitably influence the host country and in particular its language. The new laboratory in Belgorod will study the language situation in the UK in the context of multicultural society.

"Our priority directions are the role of non-language factors causing the changes of language, the problems in the sphere of cross-national relations and adaptation to the other culture, as well as self-identification and influence of ethnocultural and socio-political situation on the language surrounding," - the Chief of new laboratory, professor at BelSU Irina Kuprieva commented.

In 2017, the scientists schedule the analysis of publications in online mass-media and posts in social networks. They would like to systematize the examples of language changes in these materials and establish the database of semantic shifts of vocabulary at the up-to-date stage of evolution of English in the UK.

Additionally, the researchers are working on the program of enhanced study of texts from virtual reality. This program will allow for treating large text data and for fixing language changes taking into account the evolution of the current socio-political situation in the world.

The laboratory was created within a framework of the fellowship of the President of Russian Federation for the State Support of Young Russian Scientists with Doctor of Sciences degree. The first scientific results will be presented as a plenary lecture at Russia TESOL conference (Teaching and Learning English Bridge Science and Innovation Across the World) on September 14-17, 2017 at Tomsk Polytechnic University.