http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4392
Laada Bilaniuk
CONTESTED TONGUES: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine.
Cornell UP. 2006.
Series: Culture and Society after Socialism.
During the controversial 2004 elections that led to the “Orange Revolution”
in Ukraine, cultural and linguistic differences threatened to break apart
the country. Contested Tongues explains the complex linguistic and cultural
politics in a bilingual country where the two main languages are closely
related but their statuses are hotly contested. Laada Bilaniuk finds that
the social divisions in Ukraine are historically rooted, ideologically
constructed, and inseparable from linguistic practice. She does not take the
labeled categories as givens but questions what “Ukrainian” and “Russian”
mean to different people, and how the boundaries between these categories
may be blurred in unstable times.
Bilaniuk’s analysis of the contemporary situation is based on ethnographic
research in Ukraine and grounded in historical research essential to
understanding developments since the fall of the Soviet Union. “Mixed
language” practices (surzhyk) in Ukraine have generally been either ignored
or reviled, but Bilaniuk traces their history, their social implications,
and their accompanying ideologies. Through a focus on mixed language and
purism, the author examines the power dynamics of linguistic and cultural
correction, through which people seek either to confer or to deny others
social legitimacy. The author’s examination of the rapid transformation of
symbolic values in Ukraine challenges theories of language and social power
that have as a rule been based on the experience of relatively stable
societies.
Reviews
“Here in all its immediacy is the changing texture of life in post-Soviet
Ukraine, portrayed with the nuance and synthetic breadth that marks the best
language-centered accounts of social change. Whether readers come to it with
an interest in the shifting grounds of identity and political practice or
the social shaping of language ideology and practice, they will be sure to
gain much from this rigorous but accessible treatment.”—Joseph Errington,
Yale University
“Laada Bilaniuk presents linguistic information in a way that makes it
accessible to nonspecialists. Contested Tongues will appeal to readers
interested in post-Soviet politics and culture, anthropology, political
science, sociology, and history, as well as to those who are interested in
the processes of language contact, change, politics, and
ideology.”—Alexandra Jaffe, California State University, Long Beach
About the Author
Laada Bilaniuk is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Washington.
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