Polylingual reriodicals of kazakhstan

Abstract

The current research is devoted to the description and classification of all existing polylingual periodicals
(printed media) of Kazakhstan. The term polylingual mass media entails newspapers, magazines,
radio and TV-channels, which disseminate information at a time in two or more languages concurrently.
However, electronic media are not deliberately considered as part of this research, as there are many
modern technical possibilities for choosing the language of information displaying/ broadcasting in regard
to TV channels and websites. Therefore, we will speak just about printed polylingual mass media.
According to the statistical data, the polylingual newspapers and magazines comprise 31.5% of all
Kazakhstani mass media resources. The majority of them are bilingual. None of those bilingual periodicals
completely twins the identical text in two languages regardless of similar information preferences
of the Kazakhstani society. There are only two magazines publishing materials in Kazakh, Russian and
English languages at once amidst trilingual mass media.
The central methodology encompasses the content analysis, mathematical calculation and quantitative
analysis. Through applying the content analysis, we have to confirm or reject the given hypothesis
that polylingual publications are diverse in their content.
In fact, the bulk of polylingual mass media are the Limited liability companies (Limited partnership
or property of an individual entrepreneur). Officially, they are not controlled by the state; however,
their activities are incentivized within support of the state program called “Trinity of Languages”. The
extracted data allow us to claim that the Kazakhstani mass-media resources completely answers to the
socio-political aims of the state and just partially meets the requirements of the wider society.
Key words: Kazakhstan; multilingualism; mass media; double-language media.