Causes of language conflicts in the polyethnic space

The article considers the language conflict and language confrontation as socio- linguistic phenomena, analyzes the factors that influence the emergence of conflict attitudes among speakers of the language community. It is presented an overview of the reasons for a language conflict: the influence of the language policy, the clash of interests of the elites of the language community, the policy of linguocide, language purism, and the increased intensity of language contacts in a polyethnic space. We have considered both provoking factors and direct triggers of the language conflict, and identified the stimuli accompanying the emergence of the language conflict in a language community, which can later be analyzed as markers for measuring the conflict potential of the language community under consideration. The article describes a two-component technique that can act as a tool for measuring anxiety among groups of speakers.