Script, Sovereignty, and Society: Latinisation in Kazakhstan Through the Lens of Russian Media Discourses

Script reforms are rarely only a technical process, but also political, ideological, and cultural. In Kazakhstan, the transition from Cyrillic to Latin exemplifies such dynamics due to its geopolitical positioning and multiethnic society. Launched in 2017, the Latinisation of the Kazakh alphabet reflects the country’s evolving national and geopolitical identity. Engagement of Russia with the Kazakh alphabet reform is not accidental. Kazakhstan shares a continuous border with Russia and hosts a sizable Russian minority, the largest in both Kazakhstan and Central Asia. While Russian officials, such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, framed Latinisation as Kazakhstan’s internal affair, Russian media have been debating Latinisation from the start. To explain the discourse in Russian media, I employ theories of nationalism and the concept of the Russian World (Russkiy Mir) to analyse the discursive strategies concerning Latinisation. While its official framing stresses cultural belonging, scholars highlight its geopolitical, economic, ideological, and even military dimensions. This paper analyses over 310 Russian media articles published between 2002 and 2025 by pro-Kremlin outlets on Kazakhstan’s Latinisation through the means of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). It explores how linguistic change is framed as a threat to regional power dynamics and cultural hegemony. Drawing from Bhabha’s (1994) insights into colonial discourse and Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach, I argue that Russian media use interdiscursive strategies and blend historical, social, cultural, and geopolitical narratives in order to position Latinisation as a breakaway point from the post-Soviet “shared” Cyrillic heritage.