Форми офіційних звертань до осіб в українському медійному дискурсі періоду російсько-української війни (на матеріалі телемаратону „Єдині новини”)
Official Forms of Address in the Ukrainian Media Discourse During the Russian-Ukrainian War (Based on the Material of the “United News” Telethon)

Author(s): Larysa Kolibaba, Svitlana Romaniuk
Subject(s): Cultural history, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Ukrainian media discourse; form of address; noun; personal name; vocative case
Summary/Abstract: In the Ukrainian language of the third millennium, we observe changes caused by the democratization of society, the awakening of national and linguistic consciousness, a strengthening of the tendency towards autochthonization and an activization of purist sentiments. These changes began in the 1990s and today they continue. First of all, they consist in an attempt of the nationally conscious linguists to return the specific foundations of the Ukrainian literary language – phonetic, syntactic, morphological, word-forming, etc. – and thereby restore language’s value as part of national identity. Such trends became much more pronounced after the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, when the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians began to abandon the linguistic means sharing common traits with Russian ones, and instead use only those that, in their opinion, allow them to distance themselves from the “Russian world”. Based on the material of the “United News” telethon (2022–2023) as a leading information resource in the modern Ukrainian media space, this paper analyzes the changes in the official forms of address in the news (public) discourse during the Russian-Ukrainian war. Two main types of changes are singled out and characterized, and their reasons clarified. The widespread use of official forms of address to persons, consisting of the etiquette noun pan (to a man) or pani (to a woman), combined with another noun, which might be a given name, surname or professional position, title (scientific, military), social status, etc. Secondly, under the influence of Europeanization trends, the international integration of Ukrainian society and the efforts of its members to distance themselves from any commonalities with the Russian language, such forms of address as patronymics were pushed to the periphery of linguistic practice. Another significant change was noted – the predominant use of the vocative case, which constitutes a grammatical specificity of the Ukrainian language, although not all representatives of modern media discourse adhere to the vocative case in addresses. The reasons why media representatives do replace the vocative case forms with the nominative case forms in addressing individuals are substantiated. It has been shown that the main of them is the interfering influence on the Ukrainian language of those languages whose grammatical system does not have the vocative as a special case form, above all the Russian language. Another reason that limits the functioning of the vocative case is the so-called human factor – the low speech culture of some speakers and numerous manifestations of linguistic carelessness. The correlation of the mentioned changes with the norms of Ukrainian orthography of 2019 was traced and compared with the morphological norms codified in the previous edition of Ukrainian orthography of 1993. These changes were evaluated from the point of view of the current literary standard. Special attention is focused on normative grammatical forms of address. Trends in the formation of forms of appeal in modern media and political discourses are compared.

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