Lexical features of students’ Russian speech in multicultural region

The topic of the article is conditioned by the relevance of the Russian language performance in the polycultural space of the region. The purpose is to describe how various native (ethnical) languages influence the lexical consistency of Russian students’ speech. The research material was the author’s collection (about 200 units), which is based on recordings of spontaneous informal speech of students from Astrakhan Tatishchev State University. The informants were 120 philology students who study in multinational academic groups including Russians, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kalmyks, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Georgians, Armenians, as well as representatives of various ethnic groups from Dagestan. Using the methods of participant observation and questioning, data on the students’ speech lexical composition were obtained and further correlated with the codified lexicographic information. It was found out that ordinary students’ speech is infiltrated with regionally marked units, such as jargon and vernacular words, that reflect lingua-cultural environment of the region; Astrakhan dialectisms (astrakhanisms) of Turkic origin; borrowings from native languages of students, exotic words (mainly gastronimisms) resulting from the cross-cultural interactions in students’ community. The results can be employed for sociolinguistic and intercultural communication studies.