LING-Seminar: Clara Fridman (Konstanz): Ukrainian Language in Diaspora

In this talk, I will share insights from a new dataset of Ukrainian speakers in diaspora, investigating how they use and relate to the Ukrainian language. For decades, Ukrainian- Russian bilingual emigrants often saw Russian emerge as the default in private and community domains. Russian was seen as the more pragmatic choice among many in the Ukrainian diaspora: it served as the lingua franca for migrants from across the former Soviet Union, had more community resources and institutional support, and, for some, commanded greater prestige and reflected personal cultural identity. However, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 constituted a paradigm shift for diaspora language dynamics. The arrival of nearly seven million Ukrainian refugees into established diaspora communities substantially rebalanced both the prevailing language ideologies and the available linguistic input for Ukrainians of earlier migration waves. In parallel, many diaspora members sought to reconnect with Ukrainian linguistic and cultural identity. Thus, the relative status of Ukrainian and Russian.