The position of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine

Before one even begins to discuss language in Ukraine, one basic premise must be understood: there are no easy answers. One may succeed best in identifying relevant, objective questions instead. This research offers few solutions or predictions concerning the competition between Ukrainian and Russian languages in Ukraine, and the national consciousness of Ukrainians with relation to their language and world view. At this stage in Ukraine's development, it is more useful to bring all the disparate trends of government language planning policy, social trends and politics into one cohesive body of work for analysis. Socio-linguistics provides an appropriate and objective methodological framework to discuss both the internal linguistic problems of the language and external social and political problems. This means the analytical viewpoints generally adopted by political science or theoretical linguistics may feature, but are not handled in any depth. Rather, the inter-relationship of language and society is examined in detail using a variety of reference points. These include education in Ukraine, Ukrainian media and the internal and external attempts to regulate the use and content of Ukrainian language. This research is unique in that most of the material here presented has not appeared together in any language, nor separately in English. Furthermore, the approach is a departure from traditional methods of either linguistic or historical study, and does not reflect the political science framework adopted by contemporary scholars. It is thus an attempt to collect subjective diagnostic and corrective work on the language situation in Ukraine, to combine this research with statistical data and to present an objective analysis of the status of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine and its prospects for the future