Sprachliche Repertoires und gesellschaftliche Partizipation ukrainischsprachiger Bevölkerung in Moldova

Abstract

Linguistic Repertoires and Social Participation of the Ukrainian-speaking Population in Moldova

In the Soviet Union, the so called titular languages of the Republics – like Moldovan in the Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic (MSSR) – were fostered, at the same time as social and individual elaboration of Russian as the lingua franca of the Soviet people was promoted. Virtually no attention was paid to the linguistic groups that were minorised within the Republics, such as Ukrainians in the MSSR. In 1991, when the Republic of Moldova became independent, language policy underwent important changes. The process of “normalisation” of the new state language Moldovan/Romanian was set off and a number of minority rights were put into place. However, education in a minority language is restricted to schools with Russian as language of instruction whereby a “double minorisation” is being reproduced and the resources of the state language are hardly accessible. The example of a Ukrainan speaking village is taken into consideration in this article in order to discuss the problem of “double minorisation” with the help of the concepts “accessibility” and “reachability”, which offer a practice-oriented concept of linguistic inequalities. Finally, commonalities and differences between this theoretic framework and cultural security are being discussed.