The war and the attitude of Ukrainians to language

Abstract

This article is devoted to outlining the main trends of changes in the language and national consciousness of Ukrainians in the period of Russian-Ukrainian war. The language situation in Ukraine has changed significantly since the start of Russian aggression in February 2022. The basis of our investigation are the results of the latest sociological surveys. In order to study these changes, the materials of the following polls were involved: the poll conducted by the sociological group “Rating” (March 2022), the all-Ukrainian public opinion poll “Omnibus” conducted by KMIS (May 2022), the survey conducted by Gradus Research (October 2022), the KMIS survey (December 2022). Presented in the paper also are the opinions of Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University students regarding language issues, which were collected in the process of student questionnaires in winter 2022—2023. The results of all studies confirm the fact of changing the language situation in Ukraine in the direction of increasing the amount of the Ukrainian language. Now the process of Ukrainization has become so visible. Ukrainians became more conscious in the aspect of their national identity and more switched to the state language of communication. We can make a conclusion that the sociological data prove the obvious transformation of the language situation of Ukraine and the expansion of the functions of the Ukrainian language. The war accelerates the processes of Ukrainization of the communicative space, and therefore in the future we can predict the continuation of changes in the language situation of the country in the direction of Ukrainian monolingualism. The prospect of our study is to investigate the language behaviour of Ukrainians in the post-war period. Keywords: state language, mother tongue, language of everyday communication, language situation, language consciousness, process of Ukrainianization, language identity, sociolinguistic survey