What is it about?
In this paper, we explore Ukrainian–Russian bilingualism within the context of the current war-affected migration from Ukraine to Austria and Germany, focusing on the language attitudes of the migrants and refugees who left Ukraine after 2014 and of those who left after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, respectively. In the framework of a sociolinguistic survey, we aim to document respondents’ attitudes regarding the use of Ukrainian and Russian in the multilingual context of migration.
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Why is it important?
Our study documents the dynamics of language attitudes in the war-affected diasporic communities and, at the same time, contributes to the theory formation of language maintenance in imbalanced multilingual settings.
Perspectives
Unlike translation studies (Zhdanova, 2009) or studies on languages in the First World War (Declercq and Walker, 2016), migrant linguistics has paid very little attention to the issue of languages and war. Our study shows that it is crucial for understanding multilingualism and migration, especially in the context of war, when language, as key to (linguistic) nationalism, obtains a political dimension. As other cases across time and space have shown already, war always affects language attitudes which, in turn, can lead to shifts in language use.
Vladislava Warditz
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This page is a summary of: Ukrainian–Russian bilingualism in the war-affected migrant and refugee communities in Austria and Germany: a survey-based study on language attitudes, Frontiers in Psychology, May 2024, Frontiers,
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1364112.
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