Vol 21, No 3 (2017): Commodification of russian

The last few years have seen the influx of a new kind of tourist to India - medical tourists, coming in search of good quality and affordable treatments for a variety of medical procedures. With a large number of patients coming from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, the demand for local people with knowledge of Russian is steadily rising. Through ethnographic field work, which includes par-ticipant observations and interviews, this paper traces the development of the use of Russian in large private hospitals in Delhi, which have started attracting patients from the former Soviet Republics for medical services. The aim of the present paper is to introduce a pilot study of a relatively new sphere of economic activity where commodification of Russian language is acquiring a prominent place in India. My goal is to examine how Russian provides an added value to these hospitals in terms of the clientele they attract and how well it works for the clients themselves. In addressing these issues the paper aims to reveal the specific conditions and processes that characterize the use of Russian in ‘medical tourism’ in India and the motivation of the personnel involved. The results of the study indicate that commodification of the Russian language in India is an expanding phenomenon.

This essay analyzes the use of Russian in the linguistic landscape of Israel. Despite continu-ing hegemony of Hebrew, Russian has penetrated all spheres of public life, although concessions to multi-lingualism in Israeli society are hesitant and unsystematic. Russian written texts marking urban areas are unevenly distributed and reveal ethnic and social stratification of Israeli cities. The concentration of Russian signs is highest in business and commercial areas, where they target both domestic and international cus-tomers. The article focuses on the use of Russian in language-intensive domains and traces its influence on the symbolic economy in which cultural symbols are used as a marketing strategy.

The data collected in an ethnographic study conducted between 2014 and 2016 in tourist areas in Catalonia, Spain shows that the mastery of Russian has become a profitable commodity in Spanish tourism industry. The purpose of this paper is to show where and how Russian is used in the service industry and trace the commodification of the language over time. Against the background of fluctuating numbers of Russian-speaking visitors, this analysis will contribute to a better understanding of processes of language commodification and decommodification and the relationship between wider political and economic con-texts and valorisation of particular languages and speakers.

This article investigates the role of the Russian language in the tourism sector. In particular it discusses learning materials for the self-study of Russian for tourism workers initiated by the European Union. The author shows the advantages of the online course Retur, which combines traditional methods with modern interactive multimedia teaching aids: video, audio and written teaching materials. In the article methods of selection of lexical and grammatical material, choice of thematic blocks and thematic units are discussed. The author comes to the conclusion that the tourism sector in a number of European countries is interested in training tourism workers in Russian in tourist services. Here, Russian as a foreign language becomes a demanded “commodity” that provides added value, and the teaching of Russian should serve as the formation of a communicative competence in Russian for future and current employees in tourism.