Through the analysis of materials such as online articles, blogs, and radio broadcasts, this paper investigates linguistic purism toward Russian and English loanwords in the understudied context of post-Soviet Armenia. Our analysis finds that public commentators categorize potential loanwords as “borrowings” (փոխառություն [pʰokhaṛutʰyun]) if acceptable and “foreignisms” (օտարաբանություն [ōtarabanutʰyun]) if unacceptable, while also comparing these loanwords with acceptable and unacceptable Armenian equivalent words. In categorizing both loanwords and Armenian equivalents, commentators base their arguments on evaluative contrasts related to threats to the language, the desirability of word meaning and usage, and stylistic appropriateness. Though commentators situate themselves into opposing purist and moderate camps, differentiated by their tolerance of loanwords and classifications of individual words, the two camps rely on the same ideological framework of contrasts and use similar argumentation. Thus, while the debate invokes binary criteria for evaluating words, similar to those identified in other instances of linguistic purism, Armenian commentators themselves often defy binary categorization, falling along a fluid language-ideological continuum in which seemingly opposing commentators sometimes demonstrate striking similarities. Framed alongside prior studies of language ideologies in post-Soviet spaces, this evidence suggests that the loanword debate has a more symbolic than practical function in Armenia’s contemporary multilingual society.

中文翻译：

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“每个词都是一个世界”：后苏联时期亚美尼亚的借词意识形态和语言纯粹主义

通过对在线文章、博客和广播等材料的分析，本文研究了后苏联亚美尼亚背景下对俄语和英语借词的语言纯粹主义。我们的分析发现，如果可接受的话，公共评论者将潜在的外来词归类为“借用”（փ??????????????? [pʰokhaṛutʰyun]），如果不可接受的话，将潜在的外来词归类为“外来词”（??????????????????????? [ōtarabanutʰyun]），同时还比较这些外来词。具有可接受和不可接受的亚美尼亚语等效词。在对外来词和亚美尼亚语对应词进行分类时，评论者的论点基于与语言威胁、词义和用法的可取性以及文体适当性相关的评价对比。尽管评论家将自己分为对立的纯粹主义阵营和温和主义阵营，并根据对外来词的容忍度和个别词的分类而有所不同，但这两个阵营都依赖于相同的意识形态对比框架并使用相似的论证。因此，虽然这场辩论援引了评估词语的二元标准，类似于其他语言纯粹主义实例中所确定的标准，但亚美尼亚评论者本身经常蔑视二元分类，沿着流动的语言意识形态连续体前进，其中看似对立的评论者有时会表现出惊人的相似之处。结合先前对后苏联时代语言意识形态的研究，这一证据表明，外来词辩论在亚美尼亚当代多语言社会中的象征意义大于实际作用。