The Gender Dimension of Women’s Lingual Behavior in Polylingual Families and Partnerships

Abstract

The typical studies on national and language issues have a focus on macro-level of social structure. Despite the large number of available studies on gender inequality, in Ukraine in particular, the issue of including the gender aspect in the context of the reproduction of national identity has not been studied in detail. Given the postcolonial legacy of Ukrainian society, based on its status in relation to Russiain Soviet times, we can speak of the existence of hierarchy in the context of national identities, where language is one of its readable and expressive manifestations. Given the two hierarchical structures that exist in contemporary Ukrainian society, namely gender and national, the main question of the research paper is what the gender inequality contributes to changing language behaviors in polylingual families and partnerships in the context of postcolonial experience of Ukrainian society. The research uses conceptual distinction between „creole” and „native” patterns of national identity in Ukraine. This distinction is productive tool in reconstruction of interdependence between lingual behavior and national identity. The empirical basis of the research is a set of semi-structural interviews with women which changed their language in matrimony and/or partnership. The key research finding is that gender and postcolonial hierarchies tend to be highly interdependent. The research finds that factors of language change are different in the case of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking informants. The further research on this topic might be dedicated to following issue: is it relevant expectation that decreasing of gender inequality will have the effect on weakened of postcolonial hierarchies? Key words: lingual behavior, lingual fixity, polylingual family, partnership, postcolonial feminism.