Research directions

We study how people’s real language behavior changes under the influence of social processes: war, forced migration, urbanization, and intergenerational language transmission. The focus is on domains of use for each language, its social status in a given community, and how these indicators change over time.

The empirical basis is a sociolinguistic survey in four regions of Ukraine (Odesa, Sumy, Zakarpattia, and Kyiv) within the project “Dynamics of Language Awareness of Ukrainian Citizens under Conditions of War and Migration,” carried out in cooperation with the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Izmail State University of Humanities.

We analyze language policy not as the text of a law, but as living practice: how state norms are implemented at the regional level, how local institutions perceive them, and what the gap is between declared and actual language policy.

Special attention is given to Zakarpattia, where the language question has historically been closely intertwined with interethnic relations and the specifics of a multiethnic border region.

We study educational models that help minority children fully master the state language without losing their mother tongue: additive and transitional models of bilingual education, language immersion, CLIL methodology, and academic bilingualism.

A practical outcome has been the Centre director’s co-authorship of school textbooks of Ukrainian for classes with Hungarian as the language of instruction — the direction combines theory with real work on teaching materials.

If “Language education” studies institutional models of learning and “Language policy” studies normative frameworks, this direction focuses on the everyday, informal side of multilingualism: how families decide which language to speak at home, how languages change across generations, and how multilingualism appears in daily life and public space in multiethnic communities.

Methodologically, the direction relies on the language biography method — in-depth narrative interviews about personal language experience.

The language situation in Ukraine is heterogeneous: the experience of Zakarpattia, the region most thoroughly studied by the Centre, differs from that of Odesa or Sumy regions. A comparative view makes it possible to see which language processes are nationwide and which are specifically regional.

Special attention is given to border territories: how proximity to the state border and historical multiethnicity shape residents’ language awareness.

We study how forced displacement transforms a person’s language identity: switching to another language of communication, changing attitudes toward the mother tongue and the state language, language adaptation in a new environment — and the extent to which these changes are temporary or lasting.

The research draws on in-depth interviews with displaced people from different regions of Ukraine and forms part of the project “Dynamics of Language Awareness of Ukrainian Citizens under Conditions of War and Migration.”