The human factor in Russian sociolinguistics (subjective notes)

The article is devoted to the “anthropological turn” in Russian sociolinguistics and some theoretical problems related to the study of the “human factor”, or the category of subjectivity. The problem statement itself is based on the interpretation of the “human factor” in sociolinguistics as going beyond the traditional framework of socio-demographic factors and social roles and including language ideologies, language attitudes, identities and other subject-related phenomena. The author focuses on epistemological issues such as the specifics of the development of Soviet and Russian sociolinguistics in the global context from the perspective of the “human factor”, the boundaries of sociolinguistics, primarily with linguistic anthropology. The paper also examines terminological issues related to the translation of the term “language attitudes” into Russian. The author argues that there are narrow (traditional, standard) and broad (modern, integrative) interpretations of sociolinguistics; in the latter case, its expansion goes primarily in the anthropological direction. Both specific studies and whole disciplinary areas such as sociopsycholinguistics, linguistic ecology, ethnography of language policy, and critical ethnographic sociolinguistics are given as examples of the symbiosis of sociolinguistic and anthropological approaches. The specific studies illustrate the possibility of combining the richly detailed micro-level investigations typical for linguistic anthropology and macro-level conclusions and generalizations characteristic of (and expected from) sociolinguistics. In conclusion, some general considerations, prospects, and limitations of this work are given.