Surzhyk from the perspective of study and its functioning (on the basis of author’s sociological research) Cover Image

Cуржик із перспективи вивчення та функціонування (на матеріалі власного соціологічного дослідження)
Surzhyk from the perspective of study and its functioning (on the basis of author’s sociological research)

Author(s): Julia Rysicz-Szafraniec
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: surzhyk; mixed speech; subcode; Ukrainian language; Russian language; surzhyk speaker

Summary/Abstract: The Ukrainian-Russian diglossia led to the appearance of mixed speech, called surzhyk, in Ukrainian territories controlled by the Russian Empire. As a speech variant along with the dialects, surzhyk developed primarily in the speech of peasants and spread further in the newly built cities of Central, Eastern and Southern Ukraine from the end of the18th century. According to the language contact theory, surzhyk is a subcode for Ukrainian and Russian common language codes. At the same time, a number of political decisions during the Russian Tsardom and the Soviet empire led to the expansion of its functioning, often to a single language code. In the late 20th century, after the publication of researches on surzhyk, the emphasis was mainly on its negative impact on the national extension of the Ukrainian language. Thirty years of studying this phenomenon already shows the appearance of many linguistic studies, with a dominant of studies that use the descriptive analysis method. This research aims to focus on those opinions and approaches in recent research on surzhyk, which caused a certain resonance in linguistics and which have been continued. Also in this text, we present a vision of further perspective of (socio)linguistic analysis of mixed speech, based on the results of our own sociological survey.

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 99-122
  • Page Count: 24
  • Language: Ukrainian
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