Gender, language attitudes, and language status in Ukraine

Abstract

This article examines gender and language in post-Soviet Ukraine, where language laws and turbulent socioeconomic changes are affecting language use. It discusses ideologies of gender, language, and ethnicity in Ukraine and assesses the significance of gender in shaping stances toward three competing languages, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The analysis focuses on language ideologies and attitudes, based on survey and matched-guise language attitude test data. Two kinds of explanations for the gendered patterning are considered: first, how socialization and cultural ideologies of women's relationship to language shape the attitudes documented; and second, how political/economic forces (differences in possibilities for social power and social advancement linked to language use) lead men and women to benefit from different strategies in their use and valuation of linguistic capital. It is shown that, while sociocultural and political/economic forces reinforce each other in some cases, in others they contradict each other, with economic motives prevailing over cultural paradigms of traditionalism.