Conflicting abstractions: language groups in language politics in Ukraine

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the ongoing language debate in Ukraine. I assert that in Ukraine, unlike in Belgium or Canada to which Ukraine is often compared, the substance of language politics does not lie in opposition between language groups or between their representatives. In fact, due to the absence of clearly defined language groups, political discussions concerning language in Ukraine are not a symptom of the language structuring, but its main agent. The heated political debates regarding languages are not driven by divergent interests or group attitudes, but by conflicting agendas for the protection of languages. Therefore, in the article I emphasize the core positions of the discourses — the presentations of the language groups and their agendas. This includes both the Russophile and the Ukrainophile camps, in which one may discern various visions and action plans of the language groups that these camps claim to represent. As the analysis of their arguments shows, tensions in the language sphere lie not only in their conflicting agendas of language grouping from the standpoint of one language, Russian or Ukrainian, but in the competition concerning the very identity and even existence of the represented groups.