СОЦІОЛІНГВІСТИЧНЕ «ЗЧИТУВАННЯ» СВІТУ ПОВСЯКДЕННОСТІ: МОВНІ ПРАКТИКИ УКРАЇНЦІВ ХОЛМЩИНИ ТА ПІВДЕННОГО ПІДЛЯШШЯ В ПЕРШУ СВІТОВУ ВІЙНУ (1914–1918 рр.)

Abstract

he article is devoted to one of the little-known periods of the language situation in which autochthonous Ukrainians from the far western ethnic Ukrainian lands lived. The relevance of the topic is stipulated by the need to develop a theory of historical sociolinguistics on language, power and identity. The revealed relations of language practices (microhistorical standard of living of an individual) to the geopolitics (as macrohistory) allow us to state that the linguistic dimension of the communicative everyday life of the Ukrainian speech community appears through a set of features realized before and during the war of 1914. Before the war, the colloquial form of the Ukrainian language as a means of interpersonal communication had a dialectal nature, which was layered with Polonization and Russification influences, and oral and written forms of the Russian language were a means of official communication. During the war of 1914–1918, there were changes in the language use of Ukrainians: the Russian language in the territories of Kholmshchyna and Pidlaschia curtailed its functions after the withdrawal of the tsarist troops together with the forcibly deported Ukrainians; Ukrainian-language practices in the Kholm region did not have a chance to develop due to the support of the Austrian occupation authorities for the functions of the German and Polish languages; in Polonized Pidlaschia, occupied by the German authorities, owing to the activities of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine and later representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, Ukrainian forces managed to partially develop the functions of the Ukrainian language in administration, primary education and periodicals. Ukrainian literary language began to slowly realize its communicative, informational and unifying social functions.