Choosing a Mother Tongue

The first book to document the ‘changing your mother tongue’ movement

This book investigates narrative accounts of language and politics in Ukraine, including the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, providing a detailed analysis of how national and linguistic identity are discursively renegotiated during a time of mass conflict. It examines connections between language, identity and politics in Ukraine and the diaspora.

Corinne A. Seals is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is co-editor of Heritage Language Policies Around the World (with S. Shah; 2017, Routledge) and Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts (with V.I. Olsen-Reeder; 2019, VU University Press). Her research interests include language and identity, language and politics and Ukrainian issues.

Corinne A. Seals is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is co-editor of Heritage Language Policies Around the World (with S. Shah; 2017, Routledge) and Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts (with V. I. Olsen-Reeder; 2019, VU University Press). Her research interests include language and identity, language and politics and Ukrainian issues.

Corinne Seals deftly combines fine-grained discourse analysis with a transnational perspective, shedding new light on the dynamics of language and identity construction in Ukraine and its diasporas. This is a valuable book for sociolinguists and regional scholars interested in the impact of the ongoing war on national ideologies and linguistic choices.

This is a compelling text set against the backdrop of the 2014-2015 war in Ukraine. Complex questions on language, imagined identities, investment, and nationhood are addressed with great skill and exemplary scholarship. Corinne Seals has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary debates on language and identity.

Seals examines language and identity among Ukrainians in Ukraine and in diaspora in great depth, introducing for the first time in sociolinguistics the discourse of ‘changing your mother tongue’ which occurred throughout the narratives of the Ukrainians interviewed by her from 2009 to 2015. The result is a masterful study of language and identity among Ukrainians after the Orange Revolution and during a time of war.