Independence to the present

Since 1991, independent Ukraine has made Ukrainian the only official state language and implemented government policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian. The educational system in Ukraine has been transformed over the first decade of independence from a system that is partly Ukrainian to one that is overwhelmingly so. The government has also mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce.

Russian language still dominates the print media in most of Ukraine and private radio and TV broadcasting in the eastern, southern, and to a lesser degree central regions. The state-controlled broadcast media became exclusively Ukrainian. There are few obstacles to the usage of Russian in commerce and it is still occasionally used in the government affairs.

Slide 23: census data

Census data and offical status

In the 2001 census, 67.5% of the country population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease). It should be noted, though, that for many Ukrainians (of various ethnic descent), the term native language may not necessarily associate with the language they use more frequently. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Ukrainians consider the Ukrainian language native, including those who often speak Russian and Surzhyk (a blend of Russian vocabulary with Ukrainian grammar and pronunciation). For example, according to the official 2001 census data ^[5] approximately 75% of Kiev's population responded "Ukrainian" to the native language (ridna mova) census question, and roughly 25% responded "Russian". On the other hand, when the question "What language do you use in everyday life?" was asked in the sociological survey, the Kievans' answers were distributed as follows ^[6]: "mostly Russian": 52%, "both Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure": 32%, "mostly Ukrainian": 14%, "exclusively Ukrainian": 4.3%. Ethnic minorities, such as Romanians, Tatars and Jews usually use Russian as their language of communication. Emotional relationship towards Ukrainian is partly changing in Southern and Eastern areas, too.

Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine. The language is also one of three official languages of the breakaway Moldovan republic of Transnistria (Source: The Constitution of Transnistria, Article 12 [21]).

Ukrainian is also co-official, alongside Romanian, in ten communes in Suceava County, Romania (as well as Bistra in Maramureş County). In these localities, Ukrainians, who are an officially-recognised ethnic minority in Romania, make up more than 20% of the population. Thus, according to Romania's minority rights law, education, signage and access to public administration and the justice system are provided in Ukrainian, alongside Romanian.

In the next lecture and series of lectures, we will discuss the social aspects of language in more detail.

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Lecture 4. The relationship between language and society, part 1. Speech as social interaction, social identity and solidarity

First: I want to re-add the Sterling article

It should not be necessary for me to point out how important speech is in our everyday life. We all use it—both because we have to use it to get the things we need and want and because we want to use it to communicate our feelings, emotions, and social membership.

Speech allows us to communicate with each other at a high level of sophistication and since communication is a social activity it can be said that speech is also social.

Moreover, in order to use speech we have to learn a set of social conventions and constraints that guide how we speak.

Sociolinguists study these social conventions and constraints for speaking in different societies to better understand how people interact with one another.

Today we will discuss:

1.Speech acts.

2.Norms governing speech.

3.Social identity in speech.