“Scope” of Linguistic Resources and the Social Participation of the Ukrainian Population in the Republic of Moldova

Abstract:

In the Soviet Union, titular languages of the Republics, like Moldovan in the Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic (MSSR), were fostered. At the same time, social and individual elaboration of Russian as the lingua franca of the Soviet people was promoted. Virtually no attention was paid to minoritized linguistic groups within the various Republics, such as Ukrainians in the MSSR. In 1991, when the Republic of Moldova became independent, language policy underwent important changes. The process of “normalization” 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 today restricted to schools with Russian as language of instruction whereby a “double minoration” is being reproduced and the resources of the state language are hardly accessible. The example of a Ukrainian speaking village is taken into consideration in this chapter to discuss the problem of “double minoration” by way of the notions of “accessibility” and “reachability”, which offer a practice-oriented conceptualization of linguistic inequalities. Finally, commonalities and differences between this theoretical framework and cultural security are being discussed.