Dissertation Research: Language and Identity in Ukraine

本项目涉及密歇根大学语言人类学专业的一名学生的学位论文研究。这名学生将学习乌克兰的语言使用情况，对比人们如何使用乌克兰语和俄语，以及对他人使用乌克兰语和俄语的反应。这个新独立的国家宣布乌克兰语为官方语言。在乌克兰的部分地区，德国人、匈牙利人、波兰人、捷克人和罗马尼亚人交替主导着教育和公共生活。该项目将研究三个地区的人们如何战略性地使用语言来实现他们的社会和政治目标：首都基辅，东北部的工业和文化中心哈尔科夫，以及乌克兰西南部的一个小城市。方法包括参与者观察，录音采访，包括对语音样本的评估，以及匹配伪装测试，即人们从不同的社会和情感维度对说话者用几种不同语言阅读的同一文本做出反应和评估的程序。这个项目很重要，因为它将增加我们在前苏联这一迅速变化的领域的专业知识，并将促进我们对语言在新独立国家建立政治和社会认同方面的作用的理解。

This project involves the dissertation research of a linguistic anthropology student from the University of Michigan. The student will study the use of language in the Ukraine, contrasting how people use and react to others' use of the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The newly independent country has decreed that Ukrainian is the official language. In part of the Ukraine, German, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and Romanian have alternately dominated education and public life. The project will study how people strategically use language to effect their social and political goals in three regions: Kiev, the capital city, Kharkiv, an industrial and cultural center in the north-east, and a small city in south-western Ukraine. Methods include participant observation, taped interviews including evaluations of speech samples, and the matched guise test, a procedure whereby people react to and evaluate along various social and emotional dimensions the same text read by speakers in several different languages. This project is important because it will add to our expertise in this rapidly changing area of the ex-Soviet Union, and will advance our understanding of the role of language in establishing political and social identities in newly independent countries.