Ideologies of language use in post-Soviet Ukrainian media
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Volodymyr Kulyk
Abstract
The media is a crucial site of the articulation, contestation, and inculcation of beliefs about language, or language ideologies. In media discourse, these ideologies are not only represented in actors' and journalists' judgments about language matters, but also realized in the actual use of language. This article analyzes ideologies of language use which are articulated and embodied in contemporary Ukrainian media discourse. By examining both the presentation of language processes in society and the language practices of the media itself, I show how this discourse presents a rather ambivalent idea of the actual and appropriate language use in post-Soviet Ukraine. On the one hand, Ukrainian is assumed to be the only/primary language of the state and society, a symbolic marker of the nation, and a language that (all) citizens identify with; on the other, Russian appears to be an (equally) acceptable language of virtually all social practices. Thus the media both reflects an ambivalent normality that Ukrainian citizens inherited from the Soviet times and reproduces it in the interests of the dominant political and media elites.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Language in times of transition: an introduction
- Language practices and the language situation in Kharkiv: examining the concept of legitimate language in relation to identification and utility
- Minority language as identity factor: case study of young Russian speakers in Lviv
- Languages for the market, the nation, or the margins: overlapping ideologies of language and identity in Zakarpattia
- Ideologies of language use in post-Soviet Ukrainian media
- Language in the balance: the politics of non-accommodation on bilingual Ukrainian–Russian television shows
- Conflicting abstractions: language groups in language politics in Ukraine
- The impact of ideologies on the standardization of modern Ukrainian
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Language in times of transition: an introduction
- Language practices and the language situation in Kharkiv: examining the concept of legitimate language in relation to identification and utility
- Minority language as identity factor: case study of young Russian speakers in Lviv
- Languages for the market, the nation, or the margins: overlapping ideologies of language and identity in Zakarpattia
- Ideologies of language use in post-Soviet Ukrainian media
- Language in the balance: the politics of non-accommodation on bilingual Ukrainian–Russian television shows
- Conflicting abstractions: language groups in language politics in Ukraine
- The impact of ideologies on the standardization of modern Ukrainian
- Book reviews
