“If They Are Ukrainians by Spirit”: The Semiotics of Language and Identity in Wartime Ukraine
“If They Are Ukrainians by Spirit”: The Semiotics of Language and Identity in Wartime Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I examine the ideological representations of language and identity in wartime Ukraine against the backdrop of a mass transition from Russian to Ukrainian. Drawing on semi-structured individual interviews with sixty-four participants who embraced Ukrainian after 2022 or 2014, I employ a semiotic approach to analyse their ideological representations shaped through three semiotic processes: iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure. I find that wartime foregrounds monolithic group identifications whereby the use of Ukrainian iconizes a morally superior social identity of a young patriot defending Ukraine, while Russian is linked to an inferior “occupier” identification. However, there are also representations of multiple identities whereby Ukrainian is linked to a group identification, while Russian is tied to one’s personal experience and perceived as native. Occasionally, there are representations denying the imagined link between identity and language, which suggests the view of Ukrainian solely as a means of communication.

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