THE LATEST SOCIOLINGUISTIC SURVEYS IN UKRAINE AS A DATABASE IN LINGUISTIC AND CONFLICT STUDIES

Abstract

The object of this research is sociolinguistic surveys as a source of information in resolving linguistic conflicts, which we understand as a clash of national and linguistic interests of representatives of different language communities due to the inequality of language statuses within a bilingual or multilingual society. The subject of the study is the language issue in Ukraine, which has been used by political elites during election campaigns throughout the years of independence to mobilise their electorate and speculate. According to many researchers, the language issue in Ukraine is directly related to the definition of national identity, so sociolinguistic surveys include questions about national identity, among other things. The purpose of this paper is to try to determine the correlations between the political and ideological agenda in the country and the results of the polls. Of course, the Russian aggression could not but affect the language issue in the country. Along with the influence of official political and ideological discourses, the so-called agency is beginning to influence language policy in the country, as language activists or agents are involved in language disputes, which has been the subject of separate scientific studies in European and domestic works. Results. By comparing the results of sociolinguistic surveys throughout the years of independence, scholars are trying to identify social trends in resolving language conflicts. However, political elites continue to use the language issue to divide society, despite the fact that sociolinguistic data show that the language issue was secondary for Ukrainians, at least in the pre-war period. Conclusions. Even the optimistic results of the surveys, which do confirm the existence of certain, but not so significant, differences between the linguistic orientations of different parts of the Ukrainian population, do not provide guarantees of conflict-free coexistence on linguistic grounds, since competition between political elites can again present the language issue as a conflictogenic one and people’s views as polarised and uncompromising through the construction of relevant political and ideological discourses.