The Language Issue of the National Minorities of Transcarpatia in the Ukrainian Media 2019–2021

Abstract

Introduction. The language issue is very important for Ukraine as a state but it is often speculated on. The adopted laws «On education» (2017) and «On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as a state» (2019) caused a stir in the media, and representatives of some national minorities declared a threat to the functioning of their languages. The purpose of this article is to analyze the peculiarities of coverage of the issue of the languages of the national minorities of Transcarpathia in the Ukrainian media after the adoption of the Law of Ukraine «On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as a State Language». Relevance of the study. The article analyzes the content of publications about the languages of national minorities after the adoption of the 2019 law, calculated the dynamics of the number of such publications in online media, determined the relationship to the largest national communities in the region, and also compared the results with Google Trends indicators. Methodology. The method of content analysis, statistical analysis, and comparative method was used in the article to analyze 110 publications about the languages of the national minorities of Transcarpathia (2019–2021). Results. The analyzed publications confirm the constant interest of journalists in the issue of the language of the national minorities of Transcarpathia. Most of the publications concern the Hungarian community (76 %), but only a small part concerns the Romanian (4%), Slovak and Roma (2 % each), and German (1 %). In 15% of the publications, several national communities’ problems are covered simultaneously. The study results confirm that representatives of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia and officials of Hungary are the most active in highlighting the issue of the language of national minorities. Conclusions. The analyzed media rarely covers the positions of different parties, so it is necessary to increase the «internal» pluralism of opinions in publications, to support publications in which this issue is discussed impartially. In the future, it is necessary to study the issue of publications about national minorities in the Ukrainian media during the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and in view of the fulfillment of the requirements for Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.