Choosing a Mother Tongue

Corinne A. Seals is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is co-editor of Heritage Language Policies Around the World (with S. Shah; 2017, Routledge) and Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts (with V. I. Olsen-Reeder; 2019, VU University Press). Her research interests include language and identity, language and politics and Ukrainian issues.

• Chapter 1. Historical Language Ideologies and Sociopolitical Conflict in UkraineChapter 2. Language and Identity After the Orange Revolution                   Chapter 3. Othering and Positioning During a Time of War            Chapter 4. Who’s Responsible? The Politics of LanguageChapter 5. Renegotiating Identity and ‘Changing Your Mother Tongue’Chapter 6. Investment and Loyalty in the Ukrainian DiasporaChapter 7. ‘It Doesn’t Matter What You Speak’: Challenges to Dominant Language Ideologies by Ukrainian Young AdultsConcluding Thoughts     Appendices

Seals examines language and identity among Ukrainians in Ukraine and in diaspora in great depth, introducing for the first time in sociolinguistics the discourse of ‘changing your mother tongue’ which occurred throughout the narratives of the Ukrainians interviewed by her from 2009 to 2015. The result is a masterful study of language and identity among Ukrainians after the Orange Revolution and during a time of war.