Ekaterina Protassova
Biographic Data
| ID | 3531207 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ekaterina Protassova |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ekaterina |
| FAMILY NAME | Protassova |
| SIGNATURE | PROTASSOVA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8271-4909 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Innovation and Design in Multilingual Education
Global migration is reshaping demographics and increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in previously homogeneous communities (Lapp et al [...]
Ecological Perspectives in Early Language Education: Parent, Teacher, Peer, and Child Agency in Interaction
Bilingual teacher agency in preschool environment
This study explores the characteristics of a bilingual kindergarten environment, focusing on the perspectives of educators working in a Finnish–Russian preschool in Helsinki. In this context, teacher agency refers to teachers’ capacity to make intentional decisions and take actions to adapt pedagogical practices that effectively support bilingual children while considering their individual characteristics and needs. This agency is shaped by teach…
Integrating International Foodways and the Dominant Language Constellation Approach in Language Studies
People in multilingual societies develop complex and interconnected food-making and food-discussing networks. On the basis of an experimental course titled “Food at Home, Food on the Move: Globalization and Regionalism in Modern Food Culture” taught at the University of Helsinki, we will show how the acquisition of culinary terminology puts forward the interconnectedness of languages and the dynamics between them in several sociolinguistic contex…
Diasporans’ Emotional Attitudes toward Foodways
In immigrant communities, food often carries significant emotional weight, symbolizing a connection to home, family, and identity. As immigrants settle into new countries, familiar dishes serve as comforting reminders of their roots, evoking memories of loved ones, celebrations, and daily life in their homeland. For many, cooking and sharing traditional foods offer solace and continuity in an environment where they may feel culturally isolated. I…
Preschool Teachers for Multilingual Families
Successful interaction between family and preschool is crucial in the early stages of bilingual development. Traditionally, a Finnish-Russian preschool brings together children from Finnish-speaking, Russian-speaking, and bilingual families. Educators communicate with children and parents in different languages, using specific translanguaging strategies to develop both languages. The study explores how educators interact with parents and how chil…
Introduction to the Special Issue Linguistic Practices in Heritage Language Acquisition
Linguistic practices in heritage language (HL) acquisition refer to the ways in which language is used, managed, and passed on within families, communities, or institutions to help children, adolescents, and young adults learn and maintain it
Everyday Linguistic and Cultural Practices of the Russophone Diaspora
The Russian language has evolved into a lingua franca in post-Soviet immigrant communities, prompting an analysis of its use in different domains. Everyday Linguistic and Cultural Practices of the Russophone Diaspora explores the language maintenance of Russian abroad, emphasizing the role of educational ventures and transnational communications facilitated by the internet. This book researches specific aspects of migrant life, including occupati…
A new life with a new language: Russophone immigrants’ reflections about language learning
Studies by various authors discuss challenges which immigrants face when adapting to a new linguistic environment. This project emphasizes the impact of language learning on identity and reveals cultural flexibility in attaining social justice in multicultural contexts. These insights suggest that language programs and policies should address both the practical needs of immigrants and the preservation of their cultural identities taking into acco…
Decolonization of the Post-Soviet Russian Language
The emergence and expansion of the Russophone diaspora on all continents around the world has fostered the growth of the use of the Russian language as a means of transnational communication and mutual support, while locally, Russophones outside Russia utilize it to meet their needs, including in the spheres of business, education, and culture. Drawing on interviews, written materials, and recorded discussions, this article examines the introspec…
Introduction: Decolonizing Linguistic Space: Language Policies, Practices and Ideologies in the Post-Soviet Countries
Life Trajectories of the Russophone Speakers in Germany: 30 Years of Observation
This article presents a multifaceted portrait of immigrants to Germany from the post-Soviet states. The article traces the paths of two families over the course almost of a third of a century after immigration, focusing on language use and integration into the new environment. In-depth interviews conducted at various stages of the integration process and age-appropriate tests served as research material. The content, text, and lexical analyses, a…
Homemaking in the Russian-speaking Diaspora: Material Culture, Language and Identity
This volume serves as a significant contribution to the field of multilingualism and multiculturalism, offering a comprehensive and empirically grounded analysis of the material culture of Russian-speaking migrants. While Western scholars have explored themes concerning the interplay of materiality with emotions and language use, there remains a notable gap in scholarship when it comes to Russian-speaking migrants. The book addresses this lacuna …
Homemaking in the Russian-speaking Diaspora: Material Culture, Language and Identity
Examines the material culture of Russian-speaking migrants Investigates human-object relations from a multidisciplinary vantage point Applies theories tested in fields as diverse as anthropology and sociology, consumer and market research, sociolinguistics and semiotics Draws on data from in-depth interviews and group discussions, photographs, social media and participant observation Looks at the experiences of Russian-speaking immigrants in a ra…
Linguistic pluricentrism and the Russian language
Can the Russian language be regarded as pluricentric since it is used in various countries and regions of the world where different varieties of the language have evolved? Indeed, in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and some other countries, Russian is used as the official language of state bodies and institutions. However, each of these countries has its own linguistic and cultural specificities of grammar, vocabulary and phonetics, which…
Conceptualizing Russian Food in Emigration: Foodways in Culture Maintenance and Adaptation
Food preparation and consumption is an essential part of culture. Leaving their homeland and finding themselves in a society with eating habits different from theirs, migrants face a dilemma of adapting their diets to those customary in their new place of residence or trying to maintain their food habits. Relying on the ethnographic method and applying thematic and critical discourse analyses, this article explores how Russian-speaking migrants d…
Introduction: Everyday Verbal and Cultural Practices of the Russian Speakers Abroad
The Russian-speaking space plays an important role for diasporans: starting a business, founding a company, seeking legal advice, or high-quality medical treatment is always more convenient when participants understand the nuances of communication in a common language. It facilitates the understanding of highly specialized fields such as legislation and medicine. In business, it makes presumptions and expectations transparent, and common values a…
Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies
The purpose of this article is to help language teachers at all levels of education to understand in depth problems posed by linguistic superdiversity. Based on the study of scholarly literature, documents of educational bodies and the authors experience in language teaching in different countries, the article answers the question of how the teaching of world languages such as English and Russian is changing due to the recognition that their func…
Russian in the multilingual environment of three Asian countries
This article provides a comparative analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in three Asian countries, India, Japan, and South Korea, which are relatively less known as countries where the Russian language is used. The aim of the study is to assess the significance of the Russian language in these countries Russian-speaking diasporas, business sphere, and education, as well as to define the characteristics of its teaching in the cultural context…
Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces Driving Russian Language Norms
Russian, as a pluricentric language, demonstrates differences in pronunciation, lexis, syntactical structures, and regional specificity of grammar deviations. The imposition of a norm, which is difficult even in the metropolis, is hardly possible in the diaspora, where host countries’ realities have a strong impact on the Russian language spoken outside of Russian borders. Even support of the Russian language turns into a double-edged sword, as R…
Emotional development in the educational preschool programs of Soviet and Post-Soviet Times
Emotions are a sensitive theme in all languages, and researchers seek to understand and describe them cross-linguistically and according to the national traditions. The ‘emotional turn’ in the human sciences has touched on the educational sphere in an interesting way, where the traditional Soviet-Russian approach was replaced by the westernized terms of emotional intelligence. While applying these international schemes to the Russian psycholingui…
Introduction: Universality and specificity of emotions, with a focus on Russian
An inseparable part of human life, emotions were neglected in the academic discourse in the West for a long time, because scholars juxtaposed them with thought and reason. Yet educational research reveals that emotions are manifestations of high order intelligence and stimulate goal achievement, memory, and motivation in knowledge acquisition. Emotions are culturally and individually shaped. While some cultures consider open demonstration of feel…
The Soft Power of the Russian Language: Pluricentricity, Politics and Policies
Exploring Russian as a pluricentric language, this book provides a panoramic view of its use within and outside the nation and discusses the connections between language, politics, ideologies, and cultural contacts. Russian is widely used across the former Soviet republics and in the diaspora, but speakers outside Russia deviate from the metropolis in their use of the language and their attitudes towards it. Using country case studies from across…
Towards a Better Understanding of a Continuum of Heritage Language Proficiency: The Case of Adolescent Russian Heritage Speakers
The study presented here has three goals: (1) to identify types of errors in the noun inflectional morphology in Russian as a heritage language among Russian-speaking adolescents in Israel (n=11), the United States (n=11), Finland (n=14), and Germany (n=9), (2) to compare errors in speech production between these groups, and (3) to investigate the impact of Russian language use at home and in educational settings (formal bilingual education versu…
Russian-speakers in Finland: The ambiguities of a growing minority
Russian-speakers in Finland are the country’s largest (and growing) immigrant group. Despite their ethnic diversity and their willingness to integrate in Finnish society, they are often framed in Finnish discourse as “representatives” of Russia with dual loyalties. They are also being simultaneously developed, by different political agents, as both a Finnish and a Russian cultural minority. The article examines the tensions between these differen…
Multilingualism, Russian Language and Education in Kyrgyzstan
The study provides an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Kyrgyzstan and the current role of Russian and Kyrgyz in the republic. We present initial results of a mass survey of language use that show that the efforts to introduce the Kyrgyz language on all levels of societal use had some effect. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan is a multinational multilingual state with a high degree of mixed marriages and ethnic tolerance. To know the nation…
The Russian-speaking minority in Finland
Finland belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden for 600 years. Russian migration occurred in a series of waves (Lammi & Protassova, 2011; Mononen, 2013; Protassova, 2004). The tradition of the Russian im
Russian-Speakers in Finland: The Ambiguities of a Growing Minority
Les russophones constituent en Finlande le groupe d’immigrants le plus important, et il s’accroît. Malgré leur diversité ethnique et leur volonté de s’intégrer à la société finlandaise, ils sont souvent décrits dans le discours finlandais comme des « représentants » de la Russie dotés d’une double loyauté. Ils sont également considérés par différents agents politiques comme une minorité culturelle aussi bien finlandaise que russe. L’article exami…
Play without a common language
More and more adults nowadays transfer their children to foreign countries and cultures, where the children's natural desire to play involves them immediately in communication with other children. Thus children start to interact with each other without any common language. The subjects of our investigation are 20 Russian children aged from 2;4 to 9;7, whose parents brought them to Finland about 1–3 years ago and who are attending the Finnish‐Russ…
Preschool Teachers for Multilingual Families
Successful interaction between family and preschool is crucial in the early stages of bilingual development. Traditionally, a Finnish-Russian preschool brings together children from Finnish-speaking, Russian-speaking, and bilingual families. Educators communicate with children and parents in different languages, using specific translanguaging strategies to develop both languages. The study explores how educators interact with parents and how chil…
Emotional development in the educational preschool programs of Soviet and Post-Soviet Times
Emotions are a sensitive theme in all languages, and researchers seek to understand and describe them cross-linguistically and according to the national traditions. The ‘emotional turn’ in the human sciences has touched on the educational sphere in an interesting way, where the traditional Soviet-Russian approach was replaced by the westernized terms of emotional intelligence. While applying these international schemes to the Russian psycholingui…
Play without a common language
More and more adults nowadays transfer their children to foreign countries and cultures, where the children's natural desire to play involves them immediately in communication with other children. Thus children start to interact with each other without any common language. The subjects of our investigation are 20 Russian children aged from 2;4 to 9;7, whose parents brought them to Finland about 1–3 years ago and who are attending the Finnish‐Russ…
Latvian Bilingual Education: Towards a new approach
During the transitional period from being part of the Soviet Union, with Russian as the official state language, to an independent state within the European Union, with special language policies supporting minority languages, Latvia has developed reasonable principles of bilingual education. Nevertheless, a lot of work still needs to be done to improve teaching methods, to develop effective programmes, and to assess the multifaceted process of la…
Multilingualism, Russian Language and Education in Kyrgyzstan
The study provides an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Kyrgyzstan and the current role of Russian and Kyrgyz in the republic. We present initial results of a mass survey of language use that show that the efforts to introduce the Kyrgyz language on all levels of societal use had some effect. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan is a multinational multilingual state with a high degree of mixed marriages and ethnic tolerance. To know the nation…
Protassova Forum contribution
Acquisition of Russian gender agreement by monolingual and bilingual children
Aim and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The main goal of this study was to examine noun–adjective gender agreement in Russian by comparing bilingual children with diverse L2 backgrounds (English, Finnish, German, and Hebrew) with age-matched monolingual children and monolinguals one year younger. This comparison was made to investigate the influence of L2 grammar on the acquisition of gender agreement by (L1) Russian-speaking children. Des…
Global Russian: Between decline and revitalization
Like people, languages form hierarchies and compete. This theme comes up in political debates, in media discourse and in laypersons' attitudes as documented in narrative research. It is also reflec
The Russian-speaking minority in Finland
Finland belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden for 600 years. Russian migration occurred in a series of waves (Lammi & Protassova, 2011; Mononen, 2013; Protassova, 2004). The tradition of the Russian im
Two languages in the air: A cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices
Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew conte…
The Soft Power of the Russian Language: Pluricentricity, Politics and Policies
Exploring Russian as a pluricentric language, this book provides a panoramic view of its use within and outside the nation and discusses the connections between language, politics, ideologies, and cultural contacts. Russian is widely used across the former Soviet republics and in the diaspora, but speakers outside Russia deviate from the metropolis in their use of the language and their attitudes towards it. Using country case studies from across…
Towards a Better Understanding of a Continuum of Heritage Language Proficiency: The Case of Adolescent Russian Heritage Speakers
The study presented here has three goals: (1) to identify types of errors in the noun inflectional morphology in Russian as a heritage language among Russian-speaking adolescents in Israel (n=11), the United States (n=11), Finland (n=14), and Germany (n=9), (2) to compare errors in speech production between these groups, and (3) to investigate the impact of Russian language use at home and in educational settings (formal bilingual education versu…
Russian-speakers in Finland: The ambiguities of a growing minority
Russian-speakers in Finland are the country’s largest (and growing) immigrant group. Despite their ethnic diversity and their willingness to integrate in Finnish society, they are often framed in Finnish discourse as “representatives” of Russia with dual loyalties. They are also being simultaneously developed, by different political agents, as both a Finnish and a Russian cultural minority. The article examines the tensions between these differen…
Russian-Speakers in Finland: The Ambiguities of a Growing Minority
Les russophones constituent en Finlande le groupe d’immigrants le plus important, et il s’accroît. Malgré leur diversité ethnique et leur volonté de s’intégrer à la société finlandaise, ils sont souvent décrits dans le discours finlandais comme des « représentants » de la Russie dotés d’une double loyauté. Ils sont également considérés par différents agents politiques comme une minorité culturelle aussi bien finlandaise que russe. L’article exami…
Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies
The purpose of this article is to help language teachers at all levels of education to understand in depth problems posed by linguistic superdiversity. Based on the study of scholarly literature, documents of educational bodies and the authors experience in language teaching in different countries, the article answers the question of how the teaching of world languages such as English and Russian is changing due to the recognition that their func…
Russian in the multilingual environment of three Asian countries
This article provides a comparative analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in three Asian countries, India, Japan, and South Korea, which are relatively less known as countries where the Russian language is used. The aim of the study is to assess the significance of the Russian language in these countries Russian-speaking diasporas, business sphere, and education, as well as to define the characteristics of its teaching in the cultural context…
Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces Driving Russian Language Norms
Russian, as a pluricentric language, demonstrates differences in pronunciation, lexis, syntactical structures, and regional specificity of grammar deviations. The imposition of a norm, which is difficult even in the metropolis, is hardly possible in the diaspora, where host countries’ realities have a strong impact on the Russian language spoken outside of Russian borders. Even support of the Russian language turns into a double-edged sword, as R…
Emotional development in the educational preschool programs of Soviet and Post-Soviet Times
Emotions are a sensitive theme in all languages, and researchers seek to understand and describe them cross-linguistically and according to the national traditions. The ‘emotional turn’ in the human sciences has touched on the educational sphere in an interesting way, where the traditional Soviet-Russian approach was replaced by the westernized terms of emotional intelligence. While applying these international schemes to the Russian psycholingui…
Introduction: Universality and specificity of emotions, with a focus on Russian
An inseparable part of human life, emotions were neglected in the academic discourse in the West for a long time, because scholars juxtaposed them with thought and reason. Yet educational research reveals that emotions are manifestations of high order intelligence and stimulate goal achievement, memory, and motivation in knowledge acquisition. Emotions are culturally and individually shaped. While some cultures consider open demonstration of feel…
Homemaking in the Russian-speaking Diaspora: Material Culture, Language and Identity
This volume serves as a significant contribution to the field of multilingualism and multiculturalism, offering a comprehensive and empirically grounded analysis of the material culture of Russian-speaking migrants. While Western scholars have explored themes concerning the interplay of materiality with emotions and language use, there remains a notable gap in scholarship when it comes to Russian-speaking migrants. The book addresses this lacuna …
Homemaking in the Russian-speaking Diaspora: Material Culture, Language and Identity
Examines the material culture of Russian-speaking migrants Investigates human-object relations from a multidisciplinary vantage point Applies theories tested in fields as diverse as anthropology and sociology, consumer and market research, sociolinguistics and semiotics Draws on data from in-depth interviews and group discussions, photographs, social media and participant observation Looks at the experiences of Russian-speaking immigrants in a ra…
Linguistic pluricentrism and the Russian language
Can the Russian language be regarded as pluricentric since it is used in various countries and regions of the world where different varieties of the language have evolved? Indeed, in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and some other countries, Russian is used as the official language of state bodies and institutions. However, each of these countries has its own linguistic and cultural specificities of grammar, vocabulary and phonetics, which…
Conceptualizing Russian Food in Emigration: Foodways in Culture Maintenance and Adaptation
Food preparation and consumption is an essential part of culture. Leaving their homeland and finding themselves in a society with eating habits different from theirs, migrants face a dilemma of adapting their diets to those customary in their new place of residence or trying to maintain their food habits. Relying on the ethnographic method and applying thematic and critical discourse analyses, this article explores how Russian-speaking migrants d…
Introduction: Everyday Verbal and Cultural Practices of the Russian Speakers Abroad
The Russian-speaking space plays an important role for diasporans: starting a business, founding a company, seeking legal advice, or high-quality medical treatment is always more convenient when participants understand the nuances of communication in a common language. It facilitates the understanding of highly specialized fields such as legislation and medicine. In business, it makes presumptions and expectations transparent, and common values a…
Everyday Linguistic and Cultural Practices of the Russophone Diaspora
The Russian language has evolved into a lingua franca in post-Soviet immigrant communities, prompting an analysis of its use in different domains. Everyday Linguistic and Cultural Practices of the Russophone Diaspora explores the language maintenance of Russian abroad, emphasizing the role of educational ventures and transnational communications facilitated by the internet. This book researches specific aspects of migrant life, including occupati…
A new life with a new language: Russophone immigrants’ reflections about language learning
Studies by various authors discuss challenges which immigrants face when adapting to a new linguistic environment. This project emphasizes the impact of language learning on identity and reveals cultural flexibility in attaining social justice in multicultural contexts. These insights suggest that language programs and policies should address both the practical needs of immigrants and the preservation of their cultural identities taking into acco…
Decolonization of the Post-Soviet Russian Language
The emergence and expansion of the Russophone diaspora on all continents around the world has fostered the growth of the use of the Russian language as a means of transnational communication and mutual support, while locally, Russophones outside Russia utilize it to meet their needs, including in the spheres of business, education, and culture. Drawing on interviews, written materials, and recorded discussions, this article examines the introspec…
Linguistics (24 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Russian language (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)