Language is the being of Ukrainianness

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35774/pis2024.02.006

Keywords:

mentality, linguocide, language war, russification

Abstract

The article highlights a tense conflict field of the Ukrainian nation’s half-thousand-year struggle for the establishment and development of its mental foundation, cultural center and the main unifying factor of its own self-preservation – the Ukrainian language. Considering the open imperial policy and the centuries-old colonial rule of russia in Ukraine, it is convincingly argued that the events on the fronts of the language war activated after the Ukrainians received state independence in 1991 and intensified with particular force at the beginning (2014) and with the active phase (2022) of the Ukrainian-russian war. And now the external and internal enemies of Ukrainianness are doing everything in order to diminish, neutralize the social and cultural significance of native language in the weakened by war and corruption Ukraine. On illustrative authentic events as indisputable facts, on the one hand, the long-term systemic work of obvious and hidden humiliation and, moreover, the purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian language is demonstrated, on the other, axiomatic, fully conscious and active, the adoption of the method of successful existence of a mature ethnic group: nation and state grow out of language, are united by language and function developmentally thanks to the language, in which the millennial experience of generations is accumulated from habits, traditions, worldview to writing, art, science, philosophy. The author’s formula of eternity and invincibility of the Ukrainian people is formulated as a maxima: over the abyss of historical trials, Ukraine and its people were preserved by the language. In addition, it is concluded that the extremely unjustified tolerance to internal enemies of Ukrainianness is our long-standing social policy, as well as the immaturity and weakness of civil society. Instead of waiting for someone – the government or society – to create fertile conditions for the development of Ukrainianness, every citizen with a national identity needs to work on the Ukrainization of themselves, which at the personal level should germinate and constantly exude acts and good deeds. On the background of a positive trend towards the growth of the Ukrainian language’s social significance, there is still every reason to state that russian language in Ukraine is the language of the invader, a foreign presence of the enemy state, that is, a linguistic simulacrum or not-really-the-language as a means of pacifying and controlling the oppressed people. At the same time, it is suggested to accept the fact of russian-speaking Ukrainians as a given, but to ensure that all articles of the Law on the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language since 2019 are actually and fully implemented. Then there is hope that in the future Ukraine will turn into a language hyperlaboratory, where constructive coexistence of the national language with the development and provision of vital needs of minorities is possible.

Author Biography

  • Pavlo Hrytsenko

    Ukrainian linguist, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Director of the Ukrainian Language Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, current member of Shevchenko Scientific Society, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the “Ukrainian Language” Journal, member of the editorial board of the “Psychology and Society” Journal, Kyiv.

    hrytsenko_pavlo@ukr.net

    ORCID: 0000-0002-5363-6585

References

Hrytsenko P.Yu. Language – the Being of Ukrainianness. Psychology and Society. 2024. No. 2. P. 6-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35774/pis2024.02.006

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Published

2024-12-12

How to Cite

Hrytsenko, Pavlo. “Language Is the Being of Ukrainianness”. Psyhology & Society, vol. 90, no. 2, Dec. 2024, pp. 6-13, https://doi.org/10.35774/pis2024.02.006.