The Demography of Language Practices and Attitudes in Ukraine (original) (raw)

Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 29, no. 1-4 (2007), pp. 295-326

A well-known feature of the language situation in contemporary Ukraine is its enormous diversity-that is, sharp diff erences among practices, attitudes, and policy preferences of diff erent ethnolinguistic and regional groups of the population. Apart from observable language practice and voting patterns in the successive elections (i.e., support for those candidates and parties perceived as champions of the language preferred by the group in question), this feature was revealed by a number of mass surveys conducted in various periods of Ukraine's independence. Unfortunately, most of these surveys contained a very limited number of questions; namely, the respondent's native language, language(s) used in the family, and the attitude towards the idea of upgrading the legal status of Russian, which made it impossible to grasp the complexity of practices and attitudes both between and within the groups (Vyšnjak 2008a, 34-35).  It was only in 2006 and 2007 that detailed surveys on language practices and attitudes were conducted, respectively, by the sociological center Hromads´ka Dumka and the Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Not only did the results of those surveys demonstrate ethnolinguistic and regional diversity, but they revealed other important characteristics of the Ukrainian population's practices and attitudes as well (Besters-Dilger