Language and Power in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

The volume is an exceptional exploration of the intricate relationship between language and power within the context of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. At a time when scholarly attention to the study of language situated in specific geographical contexts is limited, this collection fills a critical gap by exploring the language dynamics and its role in reflecting and reinforcing existing power structures in two post-colonial nations, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The six contributions in this volume offer compelling insights into the constructive role of language in shaping social structures, identities, and political discourses. Employing a variety of methodological approaches, from surveys to critical discourse analysis, the authors skillfully highlight the complex interplay between linguistic practices and political dynamics, emphasizing the need for in-depth research on language, identity and power in societies undergoing rapid social and political transformations.

Olga Maxwell, Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne, Australia

To study language in use is to study power in practice. The contributors to this volume open with this premise and then run with it. Departing from common analyses of language politics in the former Soviet Bloc, which often focus on conflicts over which language to speak, the authors turn their attention to how, where, and with what effects language is actually used, played with, contested, and transformed. Readers are thus not only treated to incisive analyses of legislation, or surveys that evidence significant linguo-demographic shifts, but also introduced to sites of ideological (re)production and negotiation where the socio-political work of language takes place. We are taken into classrooms and onto battlefields (physical and virtual); we are introduced to urban bilinguals and rural migrants, thought leaders and jokesters, and even troops of TikTokers debating the merits of spelling reforms. We are invited to ponder the ideologies motivating translations of a young adult novel, and to deconstruct and then parody Russian `newspeak in the wake of Russia s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The result is a sonic and semiotic landscape of Ukraine on the eve of the Russian invasion, and in the heady year to follow. This volume is indispensable reading for those who want to understand the role language and language politics actually play in the post-Soviet space, such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Deborah Jones, Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle