Gesine Argent

Teaching fellow

Biography

Background

I began my research career in Russian linguistic culture with postgraduate study of language attitudes in post-Soviet Russia, analysing metadiscourse in print media on perceived foreign language influences on Russian, especially from English.

After defending my thesis on metadiscourse in the Russian media at the University of Edinburgh, I joined the AHRC-funded project 'The History of the French Language in Russia' at the University of Bristol as a postdoctoral research fellow. My role concerned the integration of historical sociolinguistic enquiry into the project. I specialised in the study of language attitudes expressed in published and unpublished historical sources.

In 2017, I joined the University of Edinburgh as the Centre Manager and research associate at the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre.

I now work as a teaching fellow in the Russian section.

Undergraduate teaching

Russian Studies 1A Read&Write

Russian 2A Grammar

Russian 2B Grammar

Past PhD students supervised

Jessica Tipton (University of Bristol, 2017): "Multilingualism in the Russian nobility|: a case study on the Vorontsov family (mid-1700 to mid-1800)"

Research summary

My research interests concern language culture and linguistic ideologies, predominantly in the Russian-speaking world, both in past and present times. I engage in historical sociolinguistics enquiry and use discourse analytical tools to conduct textual study of metadiscourse. I am particularly interested in how language discussion is instrumentalised in formal or informal creation and maintenance of groups (from community groups to societal strata and entire nations).

Current research interests

My current project is a historical sociolinguistic study of the history of language attitudes in the Baltic region during the Russian imperial era. I am particularly interested in the negotiation of borders - between societal groups, between different Baltic regions, between the Russian empire and the West - as expressed in language attitudes in this complex multilingual landscape. Another strand of my work looks at present-day language attitudes of Russian speakers towards foreign linguistic material. I am studying the differences in attitudes between 'native', 'homeland' speakers of Russian and those of the Russian-speaking diaspora.

Past research interests

From 2012 to 2015 I was part of "The History of the French Language in Russia", an AHRC-funded project at the University of Bristol. Working on this project brought me to historical sociolinguistics, as I studied language attitudes of mainly the Russian multilingual nobility during the long eighteenth century. I have also previously looked at language attitudes expressed in Russian post-Soviet print media.

Affiliated research centres

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