Проблема двомовності в Україні: історичний та міжнародний контекст

В статті розглянуто питання двомовності в історичному та міжнародному контекстах.The article deals with bilingual issues in the historical and international contexts

Can State Language Policies Distort Students' Demand for Higher Education?

This paper takes advantage of a recent policy experiment in Ukraine's secondary education system to study the effect of stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language on linguistic minority students’ demand for, as well as opportunities to pursue, further studies at the university level. The reform that we consider obligated all minority students, including those studying in public schools with a full cycle of education in minority languages, to take a standardized school exit test (which is also a university entry test) in Ukrainian, the state language, thus denying them previously granted access to translated tests. Using school-level data and employing the difference-in-difference estimator we find evidence that the reform resulted in a decline in the number of subjects taken by minority students at the school exit test. There was also a notable shift in the take-up of particular subjects, with fewer exams taken by minority students in more linguistically-demanding subjects such as History, Biology, and Geography, and more exams taken in foreign languages and Math. Overall, our results suggest some distortions in the accumulation of human capital by linguistic minority students induced by the language policy.language policy, economics of minorities, education, Ukraine

Post-Soviet Belarus: The Transformation of National Identity

The paper deals with the formation of a new national identity in Belarus under conditions of post-Soviet transformation. Under the term of "national identity" the author means the identity of the population of the Republic of Belarus that will be adequate to its status of a newly independent state acquired after 1991. Special attention is paid to the existing major research approaches to the problem of constructing this national identity. According to the author's view, both major approaches are inadequate; the author puts forward a new (third) approach that goes beyond discussions on language and national culture, and corresponds to the concept of plurality of identities. The author describes some paradoxes of national identity based on the opposition of "nation" and "people". These correspond to the Western model of the "creation of modern nations", which is not fully applicable to post-Soviet Belarus. All attempts to apply this model to contemporary Belarus lead scholars to several "cultural paradoxes" that can, however, be explained within a new approach

The language issue in Ukraine: An attempt at a new perspective. OSW Study 40/2012

Ukraine has been an independent state for only 20 years and the consequence of the long-term incorporation of Ukrainian lands into the Russian/Soviet state is an ethnically mixed society. In Ukraine, alongside Ukrainians, there are very many Russians and members of other nationalities of the former Soviet Union as well as a still large group of people who identify themselves as Soviets (in terms of their nationality). A significant part of Ukrainians use Russian in their everyday life (particularly professional) while knowing Ukrainian to only a small degree or not at all. Due to this Kyiv has to implement a language policy (which does not have to be pursued in e.g. Poland or Hungary) in search of solutions to ensure the stable functioning of a modern state for a multilingual society. The language issue is therefore an important challenge for the Ukrainian state and one of the more significant issues in Ukraine’s internal politics. In this text I eschew a detailed analysis of the question of Crimea as its social dynamics (also in the language area) is clearly distinct from the remaining part of Ukraine for four reasons: the short-term character of the region’s links with Ukraine, its relative geographic isolation (Crimea is almost an island), the formal autonomy of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the presence of the Crimean Tatar community which is demanding the recognition of its language rights

Types of non-standard communication encounters with special reference to Russian

Peer reviewe

Polityki językowe jako instrument kształtowania i retoryzacji stosunków wzajemnych w regionie postradzieckim

The post-Soviet region is inhabited by communities using a high number of languages and dialects. This linguistic mosaic has been formed for millennia. Very often it turned out to be a factor seriously influencing the development of the geopolitical situation in this part of the globe. The post-Soviet region remains a space where language issues are still challenging and very sensitive. In large measure, traditional problems became more complicated during the period of the regional expansion of the Russian language in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nowadays, states in the region try to create more or less autonomous language policies, sometimes calculated on relieving and sometimes on fueling socio-political conflicts. Language policies often turn out to be the instrument by which players in the region are trying to diminish or increase the gap in mutual relations. Additionally, political solutions applied to language issues often serve as a kind of argument in the axiological rivalry between communities living in the area of the former USSR. The paper aims to analyze some selected aspects of these policies. It also tries to characterize in general their rhetorical qualities and argumentative potential.Obszar postradziecki zamieszkują wspólnoty posługujące się wielką liczbą języków i dialektów. Mozaika językowa regionu kształtowała się przez tysiąclecia. Częstokroć stanowiła czynnik poważnie oddziałujący na rozwój sytuacji geopolitycznej w tejże części globu. Obszar postradziecki pozostaje przestrzenią, w której kwestie językowe nadal jawią się jako wyzwanie. W sporym stopniu tradycyjne problemy uległy komplikacji w okresie regionalnej ekspansji ruszczyzny w wiekach XIX oraz XX. Aktualnie państwa regionu starają się prowadzić bardziej lub mniej autonomiczne polityki językowe, niekiedy obliczone na łagodzenie, niekiedy na zaostrzanie miejscowych konfliktów socjopolitycznych. Polityki te nierzadko okazują się instrumentem, przy pomocy którego gracze regionalni usiłują niwelować tudzież zwiększać rozdźwięki w stosunkach wzajemnych. Co więcej, rozwiązania polityczne w kwestiach językowych często służą jako argumenty w rywalizacji aksjologicznej pomiędzy wspólnotami zamieszkującymi przestrzeń byłego ZSRR. Celem tekstu jest analiza wybranych aspektów wspomnianych polityk. Stanowi on także próbę ogólnej charakterystyki ich właściwości retorycznych oraz potencjału argumentacyjnego