“Every word is a world”: loanword ideologies and linguistic purism in post-Soviet Armenia

1 Introduction

In many post-Soviet states, varying viewpoints toward language have emerged in contending with the legacy of linguistic russification and the increasing influence of English. In Armenia specifically, debates about recent loanwords from Russian and English play out against the backdrop of centuries of intense contact with neighboring languages such as Turkish and various Iranian languages. In this paper, we analyze a debate over two types of loanwords in post-Soviet Eastern Armenian:^[1] “borrowings” (փոխառություն [pʰokhaṛutʰyun]) and “foreignisms” (օտարաբանություն [ōtarabanutʰyun]).^[2] Pʰokhaṛutʰyun simply refers to words or other material that have been borrowed from another language, while ōtarabanutʰyun refers to foreign linguistic material that has not yet taken root in Armenian and deviates from accepted norms (Petrosyan et al. 1975).^[3] While on the surface this debate largely centers around how to sort individual words into these two categories, it also touches on questions about the replacement of loanwords with equivalent Armenian words and the merits of various equivalents, appealing to similar rhetoric when discussing any potential lexical candidate. The debate over loanwords and Armenian equivalents also offers evidence of the ongoing exercise of linguistic purism in the context of post-Soviet Armenia, which remains understudied by sociolinguists.

By examining loanword debate discourse, our analysis finds that public commentators converge on three key evaluative contrasts as they make decisions about potential lexical candidates: threats (some words pose various threats to the language, while others do not), desirability of meaning and usage (some words have meanings with desirable characteristics, are well-established in the language and are used frequently; others have meanings with undesirable characteristics, are not well-established and are not used frequently), and stylistic appropriateness (some words are argued to be appropriate for certain styles of language, while others are argued to be inappropriate). Although commentators generally place themselves within one of two ideological camps – language “purists” versus “moderates” – they nonetheless rely on a shared ideological framework and invoke similar reasoning when arguing for or against the use of a particular word. For example, most commentators agree that the incorporation of borrowings is a normal part of the language’s development and that foreignisms can be harmful to Armenian and its speakers, with differences in opinion stemming from differing judgements about precisely which words fill these categories. Commentators who seem to hold strictly purist (or anti-purist) views also sometimes express opinions that align more with their opposition. To make sense of the debate over loanwords in post-Soviet Armenia, it is therefore necessary to observe that commentators fall along an ideological spectrum rather than into a purist/non-purist binary and may, in practice, shift their position along this spectrum to suit the needs of their argument. On the basis of the ideological similarities between seemingly opposing commentators, we argue that the debate about loanwords in post-Soviet Armenia has a more symbolic than practical function (following Blommaert and Verschueren 1998; Woolard 1989, who discuss symbolic functions of language in other contexts). While post-Soviet puristic practices appear to have had little impact on the actual use of foreign words in colloquial language (see Ghazaryan 2020 for documentation of foreign words in Armenian children’s speech), ongoing public debates about loanwords create a tension that sustains popular interest in the Armenian language and its future. Because linkages between language and ideas such as statehood frequently appear in discourse about Armenian loanwords (as is common with language ideologies, per Irvine and Gal 2000), the debate is additionally a symbolic site of resistance to the Soviet past, in which the future of the Armenian language and the future of the independent Armenian state are intertwined. Ultimately, the debate over loanwords in Armenian reflects speakers’ ongoing negotiation of heteroglossic anxieties (Bakhtin 1981) about contemporary multilingualism, whereby the overt concern with language purity serves as a proxy for a deeper investment in the preservation of the Armenian language and culture.

Within the field of linguistics more broadly, professional linguists often maintain that their work is “descriptivist,” or focused on uncovering how or why languages vary without applying value judgements to such variation. Non-linguists, in contrast, often adhere to more “prescriptivist” ideas, considering standard ways of speaking or writing to be “correct” (for a summary of these and other ideas related to verbal hygiene practices, see Cameron (1995)). As a consequence, many linguists view prescriptivism and related phenomena like linguistic purism with caution – as tied to standard language ideologies and at odds with the more objective and value-neutral enterprise of linguistics as a descriptivist science (Milroy and Milroy 2012). In societies such as the United States, standard language ideologies have even been described as leading to linguistic subordination and discrimination (see, for example, Lippi-Green 2012). However, there remains a need to consider the varying functions of purism and prescriptivism in specific societal contexts. Strelēvica-Ošiņa (2016: 254), for example, considers different types of prescriptivism that emerge in different societies, such as “human-oriented” prescriptivism (common in English-speaking contexts), in which linguistic features determine a person’s “place within the social hierarchy,” as opposed to “language-oriented prescriptivism” (common in Latvia), which takes the form of “protecting its language from the outside influence of other languages encroaching on its territory.” Following various authors (e.g., Brunstad 2003; Thomas 1991; Turk and Opaišić 2008), we thus do not assume that linguistic purism a priori produces harmful social outcomes such as discrimination. In fact, purism has been shown to play a role in language “revalorization” efforts in the former USSR (Ferguson 2016: 150), and has been argued to potentially serve as a means of language preservation for minority languages (Edygarova 2021).

As Brunstad (2003: 57) identifies, “general sociological and social psychological opposites, such as us versus them, we versus the Other, inside versus outside, correct versus incorrect,” generally underlie linguistic purism. Previous studies of language ideologies and purism in post-Soviet contexts such as Argent (2014), Ryazanova-Clarke (2006) and Yavorska (2010) have indeed described similar sets of contrasts underlying linguistic ideological debates. The Armenian loanword debate is particularly reminiscent of the debate identified by Argent (2014), who points out that the same metaphors are used in arguments both for and against the use of anglicisms in Russian. However, our analysis broadens the scope of the frameworks described by previous authors by identifying how the same types of ideological contrasts are applied simultaneously to both Armenian-external loanword candidates (borrowings vs. foreignisms) and Armenian-internal equivalents (acceptable equivalents vs. unacceptable equivalents). Our analysis likewise expands upon previous work by pointing out that binary “purist” versus “moderate” language ideologies in Armenia – which resemble the ideologies found in other post-Soviet contexts – do not always map tidily onto the binary classification of commentators, whose position along a language ideological continuum is far more fluid and nuanced.

2 Post-Soviet language ideologies

Numerous studies of language ideologies have been carried out in the post-Soviet space (e.g., Amantay et al. 2017; Baločkaitė 2014; Bilaniuk 2005, 2018; Gorham 2006; Karimzad and Sibgatullina 2018; Piechnik 2014; Schwalbe 2015; Wertheim 2003; Woolhiser 2001). Language ideologies are defined as beliefs about language, with individuals possessing deeply-rooted opinions of linguistic forms, the languages or dialects these forms come from, and the qualities associated with speakers who use them (Irvine and Gal 2000; see also Woolard and Schieffelin 1994). While beliefs about language exist cross-culturally, understanding the emergence of ideologies and their functions requires local specificity (Kroskrity 2021; Silverstein 2003). Research into social trends and language ideologies in post-Soviet countries demonstrates that widespread nationalizing (Bassin and Kelly 2012; Brubaker 2011; Laihonen et al. 2016) and purifying (Forker and Grenoble 2021: 3) tendencies of recent decades, part of what Pavlenko (2013: 266) calls the “monolingual turn,” represent shifts toward ethnic and linguistic homogeneity (Blommaert and Verschueren 1998; Laihonen et al. 2016). The roots of this shift can be seen in the Soviet project of creating distinct ethnolinguistic and territorial boundaries between groups of people (Bassin and Kelly 2012; O’Reilly 2001; Rouvinski 2007; Schlegel 2017; Slezkine 1994) and in the linguistic purism and prescriptivism characteristic of Soviet language policy (Kreindler 1989; Laihonen et al. 2016; Slezkine 1994; Vaicekauskienė and Šepetys 2018; Yelenevskaya 2008). Linguistic purism has been argued to occur during periods of “rapid social change,” “perceived external pressure,” and “national authentification and consolidation” (Jernudd 1989: 3).^[4] In the former Soviet Union specifically, purism has been argued to follow moments of drastic change (Bilaniuk 2005; Gorham 2006), perhaps best exemplified by the fall of the Soviet Union. Intense linguistic purism and conservatism has been found to occur in language communities facing struggles for independence (Piechnik 2014; Turk and Opaišić 2008), and such discourses on language have been argued to have implications for issues of national identity (Gorham 2000).

Previous studies in post-Soviet contexts have uncovered varying manifestations of purism. Yavorska (2010) argues that Ukrainian purism focuses on stylistic concerns and the orthographic transliteration of borrowings into Ukrainian. Ferguson’s (2016: 151) analysis of Sakha-Russian bilinguals finds competing ideas of purity: not to “taint” Russian with a “backward” language, but also to keep the indigenous Sakha language “pure” out of respect for the language and its speakers (particularly its elders). Post-Soviet concerns with linguistic purity and language more generally are often related to concerns of nationhood and national identity. Broers (2005), in discussing language policy in post-Soviet Georgia, emphasizes that both Georgians and minority groups invoke essentializing discourses of “primordial” connections between nation, territory, and language. Argent (2014: 91) finds that the Russian language becomes a symbol of the nation in discourse about anglicisms, as the “health of the language” is linked with the “health of the nation.” Although purism targeting non-lexical elements of language has been described in the post-Soviet sphere (Yavorska 2010), foreign words are widely considered the most common targets of purism (Brunstad 2003: 54; Thomas 1991: 66). We thus focus our investigation of linguistic purism in Armenia on loanwords. In characterizing the loanword debate, we aim not only to contribute to the literature on language ideologies in the post-Soviet sphere, but also to reveal how aspects of widespread ideologies, such as linguistic purism, are manifested in the specific understudied context of post-Soviet Armenia.

3 Historicizing language policy in post-Soviet Armenia

Armenian is an Indo-European language which developed from Proto-Armenian to Classical Armenian (Գրաբար [Grabar]) by the 5th to 11th centuries and then to Middle Armenian (12th to 16th centuries) before becoming codified as Աշխարհաբար ([Ashkharhabar]), or a new secular and literary standard, in the 19th century (Dum-Tragut 2009; Karapetian 2014; Martirosyan 2019). Ultimately, two standards were created: Eastern Armenian in Tsarist-controlled Tbilisi and Moscow and Western Armenian in Ottoman Constantinople (Cowe 1992; Dum-Tragut 2009; Karapetian 2014; Oshagan 1997). Both were made to be distinct from the religious Classical language and the vernacular dialects spoken throughout the region (Cowe 1992; Dum-Tragut 2009; Karapetian 2014; Oshagan 1997). Foreign loanwords, such as those from French and Turkish, were translated into the new standards, sometimes through the reincorporation of Classical Armenian equivalents (Cowe 1992; Meillet 1928; Oshagan 1997). After the mid-19th century, Eastern and Western Armenian gradually spread, aided by the publication of newspapers, literature and plays, and also through the creation of curricula for Armenian schools (Cowe 1992; Dum-Tragut 2009; Karapetian 2014; Oshagan 1997).

When Armenia was incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920s, a period of Soviet language policy began. The establishment of Soviet rule created a practical issue of how to govern an area that covered more than eight million square miles with a population of 286 million, consisting of 130 ethnic groups speaking between 150 and 200 languages (Grenoble 2003: 1–2). Soviet language planners oscillated between a position of supporting and promoting national languages and an opposing position of suppressing and russifying them (Chevalier 2018; Forker and Grenoble 2021; Grenoble 2003; Lewis 1972; Kirkwood 1989; Pavlenko 2006). By the 1940s, 70–80 % of new vocabulary in the languages of the U.S.S.R. was borrowed from Russian (Grenoble 2003: 52), especially in formal domains like government, education, science, and technology (Lewis 1972; Pavlenko 2006). Armenian, like Georgian, was somewhat exceptional among Soviet languages because of a strong literary tradition as well as a unique Armenian alphabet (Grenoble 2003: 123), but russification nonetheless affected Armenian. In Soviet Armenia specifically, by 1950 the Terminology Commission had approved 18,000 new medical terms, 13,000 new legal terms, and many other new terms, most of which originated from Russian (Lewis 1972: 172). By the 1980s, a majority of Soviet citizens had received Russian instruction in school or had knowledge of Russian (Dum-Tragut 2009; Grenoble 2003; Lewis 1972; Pavlenko 2006).

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was followed by a shift away from Russian and a reintroduction of Armenian for many public spheres (Abrahamian 1998; Cowe 1992; Dum-Tragut 2009; Gevorgyan 2006; Karapetian 2014; Pavlenko 2008, 2013; Petrossian 1997). In 1993, a State Language Inspectorate Լեզվի պետական տեսչություն [Lezvi petakan teschʰutʰyun]), which later became known as the Language Committee (Լեզվի կոմիտե [Lezvi komite]), was established to oversee the continued development of Armenian language policies (Dum-Tragut 2009; Lezvi komite 2019a). In the same year, the Language Law of the Republic of Armenia was passed, stating that “in official conversation,^[5] citizens of the Republic of Armenia shall be obliged to ensure the purity of language” (Dum-Tragut 2009: 6). Language has played a crucial role in late- and post-Soviet Armenian nationalism and nation-building (Dum-Tragut 2013; Panossian 2006), and linguistic purism has formed the backbone of post-independence language policy (Zakarian 1996), with officials often seeking to replace loanwords with calques or Classical Armenian equivalents (Dum-Tragut 2009: 6, 2013: 295). Despite these reactions against Soviet-era russification, the role of Russian in public life has nevertheless been recovering in recent years (Dum-Tragut 2013: 294; Kevkhoyan 2012; Mkhoyan 2017).

4 Methods and materials

Our methodology is informed by other discourse-focused approaches to the study of linguistic purism in post-Soviet states (e.g., Argent 2014; Gorham 2000; Karimzad and Sibgatullina 2018). We analyze publicly-available sources that comment on loanwords in Armenian, considering articles in the online press, blogs and social media posts, radio and television programs, textbooks, academic articles, and statements published by language regulatory bodies and their critics. While some individuals contribute frequently to the loanword debate (such as well-known professional linguist Hrachʰ Martirosyan) or cover a wide array of issues when they do contribute (such as publisher Sos Movsisyan), our analysis synthesizes more than three dozen instances of public commentary about loanwords in recent years. Commentators include individuals with professions related to language, such as linguists, textbook authors, government officials, educators, and producers of language-related media, as well as individuals with unknown professions who have expressed their opinions in public forums such as blogs. Following Karimzad and Sibgatullina (2018: 128), who describe processes of linguistic purification as practiced by the “most vocal community members,” and Gorham (2000: 616), who focuses on the discourse of “people in positions of cultural authority,” we limit the scope of our analysis to public commentary and do not claim to characterize the language practices of everyday speakers. Following the approach of Argent (2014), we present excerpts that highlight key dimensions of the debate and reveal the patterns of interest. This discourse analytic methodology is well suited for considering the relationship between language as a sociocultural practice and language as possessing symbolic functions (Gorham 2000; Woolhiser 2014).

5 Background to the debate: borrowings versus foreignisms and purist versus moderate ideologies

Some Armenian commentators acknowledge the existence of grammatical foreignisms (Ezekyan 2007: 129; Hovhannisyan 2016), or discourage the use of grammatical calques from Russian (Armenian Public TV 2018a, 2018c, 2019a; Avetisyan 2020e, 2020g; Gyurjinyan 2022; Lezvi komite 2019b; Sargsyan 2012). However, discussions about Armenian borrowings and foreignisms generally focus on lexical items. The phrase “մի բառը մի աշխարհ է” (“every word is a world”),^[6] which often appears in language-related media, exemplifies this lexicalist ideology. This phrase not only appears in the opening of the Armenian Public Radio show “We and our words” (Մենք և մեր բառերը [Menkʰ ev mer baṛerě]), during which loanwords are often discussed, but also in online articles such as Sargsyan (2013). The frequent use of this phrase suggests that the focus on words is not new in Armenian society (or, at least, is not understood as new). The quote is widely attributed to renowned Armenian writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hovhannes Tʰumanyan (Avetisyan 2020e; Hayastani Hanrapetutʰyan Kaṛavarutʰyun 2013; Lurer.com 2013). However, Tʰumanyan’s original quote^[7] actually referenced not only words, but also other levels of linguistic structure (sounds, forms, and styles) (Tʰumanyan 1995 [1916]: 293). The selective remembering of Tʰumanyan’s quote demonstrates the prevalence of a lexicalist or word-centric ideology and justifies our approach of focusing on discourse about loanwords.

As previously discussed, discourse on loanwords in post-Soviet Armenia relies on an established distinction between borrowings (p ^h okhaṛutʰyun) and foreignisms (ōtarabanut ^h yun). Similar distinctions between different types of loanwords have been described in several other studies of post-Soviet language ideologies, in which the types of words labeled “foreignisms” in Armenian discourse are called “inappropriate loans” (Ryazanova-Clarke 2006) or “barbarisms” (Yelenevskaya 2008). In Table 1, the left column shows words which are unquestionably borrowings (p ^h okhaṛutʰyun), or words that are no longer perceptibly foreign but originate from various foreign languages (etymologies can be found in Achaṛyan (1971)). The words in the right column would be considered foreignisms (ōtarabanut ^h yun) by most commentators. While these words can be found in online dictionaries like Vik ^h ibaṛaran (Vikʰibaṛaran n.d.), they have relatively widely used Armenian equivalents (given in parentheses) and are recognizably foreign. The classification of many other loanwords, some examples of which are provided in the middle column and labeled “Debatable/unstable,” is controversial. Like the words in the right column, these words are also relatively recent loans that are perceptibly foreign. However, they lack unambiguous Armenian equivalents, and some commentators consider them borrowings rather than foreignisms. A factor contributing to the controversial status of many words is that a word may transition from borrowing to foreignism after an Armenian equivalent is created and propagated. Words like կուլտուրա ([kultura] ‘culture’), տելեվիզոր ([televizor] ‘television’), and ռեսպուբլիկա ([ṛespublika] ‘republic’) were once considered borrowings but are now considered foreignisms (Ezekyan 2007: 128–129). Notably, debatable words and foreignisms all derive from Russian and English, demonstrating that words from these languages are more likely to be targeted as foreignisms than words from languages that lack contemporary influence in Armenia. All of the loanwords discussed in excerpts of commentary throughout the remainder of this paper also originate from Russian and/or English (it is often difficult to precisely define the source of a loanword, since in many cases the immediate source of a loan may be Russian, while the word may have been borrowed into Russian from other languages such as English).

Commentators in the loanword debate exhibit two main viewpoints: a purist point of view, which represents a strong desire to replace as many foreign words as possible with Armenian equivalents, and a moderate point of view, which is characterized by greater tolerance toward at least some types of loanwords. Although commentators express differing opinions about specific loanwords, all rely on the same basic distinction between borrowings and foreignisms. Most commentators also agree that the incorporation of borrowings is a normal part of the development of language, while foreignisms can be harmful to the language and its speakers. Differences in opinion, therefore, stem from differing judgements about which words are acceptable borrowings and which words are unacceptable foreignisms. Many commentators exhibit both purist and moderate ideological tendencies (e.g. Avetisyan 2020d; Ghahramanyan n.d.; Lezvi komite 2019c; Mirzoyan 2016; Stamboltsʰyan n.d.). Thus, it is most accurate to characterize the commentators as falling along a spectrum, and commentators at opposite ends of this continuum often rely on the same concepts and reasoning.

Commentators are also united by their dissatisfaction with the actions of the State Language Inspectorate and its successor, the Language Committee. Despite these organizations being official agents of a relatively purist ideology, many commentators with purist tendencies express dissatisfaction with them (Aṛavot 2009; Lezvi zhoghovrdakan teschʰutʰyun n.d.; Vardanyan 2013). A representative of the People’s Language Inspectorate (Լեզվի ժողովրդական տեսչություն [Lezvi zhoghovrdakan teschʰutʰyun]), an organization devoted to waging an “unrelenting and consistent struggle” against “foreignisms, falsifications, violations of the linguistic demands… of the Language Law of the Armenian Constitution…”^[8] (Lezvi zhoghovrdakan teschʰutʰyun n.d.), criticizes flaws in a publication of the State Inspectorate, including the use of foreignisms (Sargsyan 2012). Some moderate commentators also express dissatisfaction with the governmental bodies responsible for language. Movsisyan (2010) criticizes the “dilettantes” (“դիլետանտները”) who were entrusted with language issues after Armenia’s independence and defends many words that were ousted by puristic reforms. Specific words considered acceptable by moderate commentators sometimes clash with the publications of the Language Committee. For example, Martirosyan (2014) and Kʰamalyan (2015: 71) are accepting of words ending in -իզմ ([-izm]), while the publications of the Language Committee list “-isms” as foreignisms (Lezvi komite 2018, 2020b). Though publications of the Language Committee – such as advisories providing lists of foreign words to avoid, along with their Armenian equivalents (Lezvi komite 2018, 2019b, 2019c, 2020a, 2020b) – often express purist views, some of its current or former leaders express relatively moderate views in interviews (Gyurjinyan 2018; Mirzoyan 2016).

Although most commentators cannot be classified as either completely resistant or completely open to all foreign words, commentators tend to see themselves as part of one or the other ideological camp. Those with more moderate tendencies ridicule purism and purists, who are frequently labeled as մաքրամոլ ([makʰramol] ‘purist,’ literally ‘clean-aholic’). According to one purist commentator (Aṛavot 2009), moderates joke that purism threatens to result in the coinage of absurdly long equivalents for some loans, such as երկարակլորախմորածակ ([erkaraklorakhmoratsak], literally ‘long round dough hole’) for մակարոն ([makaron] ‘pasta’). Commentators with more purist tendencies are also critical of moderates (and of people who use many foreign words), whom they view as օտարամոլ ([ōtaramol] ‘foreign-aholics’). Purists accuse moderates of serving foreign interests (Aṛavot 2009) and claim that people who use excessive foreign words are attempting to appear “literate” or “educated” (“գրագետ”), “well-read” (“կարդացած”), or knowledgeable of foreign languages (Armenian Public TV 2018b, 2018d; Mirzoyan 2016; Seyranyan n.d.), but also that they are uneducated (Stamboltsʰyan n.d.), careless or lazy (Avetisyan 2020d; Galstyan 2018), or showing “bourgeois philistinism” (“քաղքենի պճնամոլություն”) (Avetisyan 2020d). Thus, commentators often present themselves as representing one side of the debate, despite expressing more nuanced views and being united by the same ideological framework.

6 Lexical contrasts and evaluative contrasts

As mentioned above, the Armenian loanword debate encompasses discussions not only about different types of loanwords, but also about Armenian equivalents for loanwords. The contrasting pairs of word categories that are relevant to the debate, which henceforth shall be called ‘lexical contrasts,’ are conceptualized below in Figure 1. The top-most node reflects the need to create words for new concepts and objects, a problem which has two possible outcomes: the integration of a loanword, or the coining of a new word (here, an Armenian equivalent). Armenian equivalents are typically formed either by calquing or by repurposing an Armenian archaism. The middle level in Figure 1 represents the first of three lexical contrasts we consider: “loanword versus Armenian equivalent.” The lower level of contrasts in Figure 1 reflects the fact that regardless of whether a novel word is produced through loan generation or the creation of an Armenian equivalent, the resulting candidate may succumb to further scrutiny. Loanwords deemed unacceptable or inappropriate come to be classified as foreignisms while those deemed acceptable or appropriate are borrowings. Similarly, Armenian equivalents may be met with positive or negative evaluations. The remaining two lexical contrasts we consider, therefore, are “foreignism versus borrowing” and “bad Armenian equivalent versus good Armenian equivalent.”

Figure 1:

Lexical contrasts.

Commentators in the Armenian loanword debate also make use of binary ‘evaluative contrasts’ to sort words into the categories depicted in Figure 1. Accordingly, in the sections below we discuss three broad evaluative contrasts that underlie commentators’ discussions of ‘loanword versus Armenian equivalent’ (lexical contrast 1), ‘foreignism versus borrowing’ (lexical contrast 2), and ‘bad Armenian equivalent versus good Armenian equivalent’ (lexical contrast 3). As will be evident in the analysis below, it is often difficult to separate the discussions on the three lexical contrasts, as the same evaluative contrasts are often applied to multiple lexical contrasts simultaneously. We thus group related discussions from the loanword debate into the following three categories of evaluative contrasts:

1. Threats: some words pose various threats to the language; others do not

2. Desirability of word meaning and usage: some words have meanings with desirable characteristics, are well-established in the language and are used frequently; others have meanings with undesirable characteristics, are not well-established and are not used frequently

3. Stylistic appropriateness: some words are argued to be “correct” and appropriate for some or all styles of language; others are viewed as “incorrect” and inappropriate for some or all styles

For each of the three evaluative contrasts, we present a grouping of related qualities or ideological dimensions that are commonly invoked. Throughout the discussion, we also show how commentators with both purist and moderate tendencies frequently rely on the same ideological framework and reasoning, resulting in shifting positions along an ideological continuum.

7 Discussion and conclusion

Common across three lexical contrasts of loanword versus Armenian equivalent, foreignism versus borrowing, and good Armenian equivalent versus bad Armenian equivalent (Figure 1) are a set of ideological or qualitative dimensions that group together as three broader evaluative contrasts, invoked similarly by purist and moderate commentators as they debate loanwords. Commentators navigate three evaluative contrasts of threats, desirability of word meaning/usage, and stylistic appropriateness by invoking their various dimensions, and in doing so they position themselves along a continuum of viewpoints that range from strong purism at one end to a more moderate tolerance of at least some loanwords at the other. The evaluative contrasts we identify for the contemporary Armenian context are similar to those observed in previous studies of purism, both in other post-Soviet states and elsewhere. Unlike in other studies, however, we point out that seemingly opposing commentators, who may on the surface disagree about the acceptability of individual words, generally rely on the same framework of contrasts to welcome borrowings and certain “acceptable” Armenian equivalents and condemn foreignisms and “unacceptable” equivalents. Commentators present different interpretations of available contrasts and differing conclusions about the same lexical items, but individual commentators also exhibit ideological slippage through claims that are sometimes purist, sometimes moderate. For example, Mirzoyan (2016) acknowledges that the borrowing of words between languages is natural while also being concerned about the comprehensibility of foreign words, and Martirosyan (2014) discourages the use of certain foreign words based on how they sound, while nevertheless stating that “One should not edit the mother tongue without serious reason.” Based on this discursive evidence from the debate over Armenian loanwords, it is most appropriate to say that commentators have shifting positions along a language ideological continuum, but are ultimately all invested in the same goal: producing a version of the Armenian language most suitable for contemporary life by contending with the legacy of Russian-centric Soviet language policies and the growing influence of English.

Because of the shared framework that underlies the seemingly contradictory purist and moderate viewpoints, we propose that the debate serves a largely symbolic function in post-Soviet Armenian society. As mentioned previously, available accounts suggest that the use of foreign words in everyday speech has been minimally affected by the past several decades of purification efforts. The continued ubiquity of public discourse on loanwords despite its minimal practical impact underscores our proposal that the loanword debate serves a symbolic function of fueling public discussion about the Armenian language. Our methods, which focused primarily on such public discourse rather than on the language use of everyday speakers, were indeed well-suited for uncovering precisely this type of symbolic function, while impacts of the loanword debate on everyday speech must be explored through different methodology in future research.

The tension produced by the loanword debate sustains interest in the maintenance and preservation of the Armenian language, while its underlying framework of ideological contrasts provides a roadmap for lexical choices. Evidence of the interest in lexical choices produced by the loanword debate is widespread on social media, with a prominent example being the public Facebook group “Lessons of the Mother Tongue” (Մայրենի լեզվի դասեր [Mayreni lezvi daser]). In this group, which currently has over forty thousand members, posts in which speakers ask for Armenian equivalents for foreign words are common (Mayreni lezvi daser n.d.). This interest-sustaining function of the loanword debate shows similarities to symbolic functions of discourse about language that have been described in other post-Soviet contexts, such as Ryazanova-Clarke’s (2006: 33) discussion of how the discourse of “linguistic culture” in post-Soviet Russia serves as “a locus for the on-going negotiation of opinions about linguistic cultural forms and the status of a language,” and Karimzad and Sibgatullina’s (2018: 124) argument that puristic discourse among Tatar and Iranian Azerbaijani Facebook users is “identity work,” through which users seek to assert authenticity.

The ideologies identified in our analysis, like all language ideologies, allow for the incorporation of linkages between the Armenian language and other aspects of life, history, and politics. Indeed, explicit linkages to themes such as statehood and the preservation of national identity are found in loanword discourse. By means of such linkages, concern with the linguistic purity of Armenian also becomes concern with the preservation of Armenian statehood and identity. Armenia has a long history of threats from neighboring nations, and has been engaged in an ongoing geopolitical conflict with neighbor Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), a politically autonomous region granted to Azerbaijan during the Soviet period. Threats to linguistic safety have been likened to existential threats; for example, after the genocide committed against Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century, “the Russifying language policy of the late-Soviet period was interpreted as language genocide” (Abrahamian 1998: 13). The interest in the Armenian language generated by the loanword debate thus also sustains interest in pressing societal issues, such as the perceived precarity of Armenia’s independence. Such a phenomenon is paralleled in other societies with similar geopolitical circumstances. For example, Smakman (2012: 29) notes that speakers of less widely used languages from countries “the shape and size of which have changed due to wars and other circumstances” often express a strong desire to have a well-defined national standard language.

In light of the symbolic functions of the loanword debate in Armenian society, and the minimal impact that several decades of purist discourse has evidently had on everyday speech, we follow other authors (e.g. Thomas 1991; Turk and Opaišić 2008) in arguing that linguistic purism is not harmful a priori, but rather can produce detrimental outcomes in particular social contexts. In addition to the potential positive influences of linguistic purism that Ferguson (2016) and Edygarova (2021) have identified in post-Soviet contexts, linguistic purism has been described as “resistance to colonization” and to “Chinese linguistic and cultural hegemony” in Inner Mongolia (Baioud and Khuanuud 2022: 315). We propose that linguistic purism in post-Soviet Armenia likewise does not inherently exert a negative influence on speakers, but rather is part of a larger ideological framework that fulfills symbolic functions in the maintenance of national identity. The need for nuance in considering the social effects of linguistic purism parallels the need for nuance in evaluating ideologies such as nationalism and linguistic prescriptivism, which may or may not have negative consequences for individuals or groups depending on the local context (see Condee (2012) for discussion of “empire-preserving” versus “empire-dismantling” nationalism and Strelēvica-Ošiņa (2016) for discussion of “human-oriented” versus “language-oriented” prescriptivism).

Today, a large portion of signage in Armenia appears in three languages: Armenian, Russian, and English. Survey data from 2007 indicates that Armenian citizens consume more Russian media than their counterparts in most other post-Soviet countries (Fierman 2012), and it is often more common to hear Russian words than their Armenian equivalents in colloquial Armenian for words like ice cream, just, and even goodbye. Thus, the debate over different types of loanwords and their relationship to Armenian equivalents is a microcosm of a much larger tension between the Armenian language and culture and the outside world, which is represented in part by the presence of languages like Russian and English in everyday life. Though commentators differ in their judgments on individual words, both the purist and moderate approaches to the loanword debate fulfill the symbolic role of negotiating the relationship between the Armenian language and hegemonic languages such as English and Russian, attempting to define the place of Armenian in the globalizing world while also resisting the legacy of the Soviet past.