Towards a typology of language situations in historical sociolinguistics. The language situation in Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia in 1815-1915

Abstract

The article seeks to study a new period in the typological characteristics of language situations related to the functions of the Ukrainian language. The purpose of the article is to analyze the changes in the language situation and the causal interaction of social functions of languages used by the indigenous Ukrainian population on the outskirts of ethnically Ukrainian territory of Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia in 1815–1915. In order to reach this goal, the author reveals the political factors that led to a variety of language situations, communicative practices, and assimilation processes. The analysis is based on the results of interdisciplinary research on the history, politics, and culture of Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia, as well as the works on historical sociolinguistics. The sources of analysis include travel records, memoirs, and documents, to which the method of sociolinguistic interpretation and reinterpretation is applied, as well as comparative and biographical methods, elements of discourse analysis. The results testify to three geopolitical influences that changed the directions of development of the language situation: the transition of territories within the Kingdom of Poland to the Russian Empire in 1815; military actions on the territory of Kholmshchyna and Pidliashshia during the First World War in 1914– 1915; the arrival of the new occupation authorities in 1915. In early 20th century, there was a decrease in the number of native speakers of the Ukrainian language: after the permitted conversion from Orthodoxy to the Roman Catholic faith under the tsarist law of 1905 and in connection with the deportation in 1915. Communicative practices of Ukrainians in different spheres of life included a combination of languages: colloquial Ukrainian and Polish, literary Polish, Russian and occasionally Ukrainian, Church Slavonic with Ukrainian and Russian pronunciations, and the German language. Based on the assimilative interaction of the languages, it might be suggested that the life of Ukrainians took place in the face of Polonization. This was particularly a manifestation of the resistance of the Polish and non-Polish population to the tsarist government as an occupation after the uprisings of 1831 and 1863–64, and after 1875, and Russification as a result of the planned conversion of Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy, the creation of new educational institutions and separation on the basis of Lublin and Siedlce Voivodeships