The politics of language and identity in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Language is a key element in negotiations of power and identity, from interpersonal relations to the definition of large sociopolitical units. In this dissertation I examine the role that language has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of modern nations, through a case study of Ukraine. I focus on ideologies of language, including beliefs about language in general and attitudes towards particular linguistic usages, to discover how boundaries are drawn onto linguistic variability. The ways in which people ascribe correctness, purity, prestige and power to various linguistic forms reveal how language categories, namely Ukrainian and Russian, and their associated national identities, are constructed and manipulated in the process of nation building. The findings presented are based on two years of fieldwork in Ukraine in 1991-92 and 1994-95, consisting of a language attitude (matched-guise) test, survey, participant observation, taped interviews, and archival and media research. The test and survey were administered to 2,000 respondents in three regions of Ukraine, Lviv, Kyiv (Kiev), and Dnipropetrovsk. The test documented unconscious attitudes toward Ukrainian, Russian, and English languages, including varieties with non-standard pronunciations of Ukrainian and Russian. The survey gathered information on education, ethnic background, language use, and conscious language ideologies. I have found that there has been a general shift in language use and ideology, with Ukrainian (the official state language since 1990) used more widely and accorded greater prestige than during the Soviet period. This is a striking change given the long history of Russian language domination, which led Ukrainian to be widely regarded as a backward peasant language. I argue that the availability of English as an international language, as an alternate to Russian, facilitated the displacement of Russian by Ukrainian in many spheres. I also examine the language varieties that mix or blend Ukrainian and Russian, referred to by the general term surzhyk, and the social conditions that fostered their development. These nonstandard forms have received much negative attention in daily discussions and in the media. I conclude that destabilized linguistic hegemony has led to widespread contestation of linguistic correctness as a key element in the negotiation of status and identity.Ph.D.Cultural anthropologyLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsLinguisticsSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130905/2/9825171.pd