Abstract

On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. According to Vladimir Putin's speech, the main goal of the war was to protect the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Many Ukrainians indeed speak Russian on a daily basis, largely due to the long and complicated history between the two countries. Recently, there has been an increase in pro-Ukrainian ideologies (Kulyk 2016); however, as the full-scale invasion began, people started advocating for Ukrainian usage in all public domains, and many even vowed to never speak Russian again. Since then, there has been a profound change in language attitudes and usage; for example, Russian-speaking television is prefaced with content warnings and is dubbed in Ukrainian, and President Zelenskyy now asks for an interpreter when interacting with Russian speakers. Following Droogsma (2017), I examine this conflict-catalyzed change in language ideologies and attitudes in Ukraine and how it facilitates language and identity shift. The aim of this study is to answer the following research questions: What are the primary motivations for people who decide to switch from speaking Russian to Ukrainian? What is the process like? How do they manage the switch? What aspects/domains are most difficult? The results are based on social media posts and semi-structured interviews with Ukrainians who have decided to switch from speaking primarily Russian to using Ukrainian in their daily lives. These interviews illuminate nuance in Ukrainians' shift from Russian to Ukrainian, as well as ways in which Surzhyk (a historically stigmatized Ukrainian-Russian mixed sociolect) has been reclaimed by Russian-dominant Ukrainians as a helpful bridge towards Ukrainian-dominance. These results help to document the ongoing language shift in Ukraine, contributing to the existing body of sociolinguistic research about Eastern European languages (Gulida 2009), as well as deepening our understanding of how language attitudes and ideologies change in times of conflict and what implications this process has for speech communities.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2025-12-17

Document Type

Thesis

Keywords

language shift, Ukrainian, Russian, language attitudes, language ideology

Language

english

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