DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

Ukraine at War and Linguistic Estrangement

Building on surveys that have identified an increasing preference for the use of Ukrainian over Russian in wartime Ukraine, the paper endeavours to identify empirical manifestations of what is preliminarily referred to as a process of “linguistic estrangement” of the Russian language in the country. Russian has increasingly acquired “foreign” connotations despite its widespread use domestically and has failed to solidify as a cornerstone of Ukrainian citizens’ identity. These changes will inform discourses on the country’s evolving language and minority rights policies.

Anastasia Leshchyshyn is a PhD student at McGill University, Canada.