ABSTRACT
The situation with Russian in Kazakhstan in the 21st century differs from that of other post-Soviet countries. Its high status is defined by the constitution, it functions in all spheres of communication without restrictions, and it is a language of international communication both within the country and with the neighboring states. Russian exists close contact with the Kazakh language, which influences corpus characteristics, and communicative and pragmatic norms within the country. Bilingual variability promotes the accumulation of Kazakhizms in the Russian of Kazakhstan, and it is supported by the Kazakh-Russian bilingualism which remains widespread. At the same time Kazakh traditional culture has become more widespread, which in turn has changed the speech behavior of Russian-speaking communicants. While Russian is continuously used in the public sphere the dominant tendencies of language policy target further assertation of the Kazakh language. Taking into account that language functioning is a multi-faceted phenomenon, purely linguistic aspects are not sufficient to give it a comprehensive description. The functioning model of Russian in Kazakhstan includes social, demographic, areal, juridical, linguistic, communicative, and demoscopic blocks of tasks. This model is presented in the chapter.
