STATE LANGUAGE POLICY: CURRENT PROBLEMS

Abstract

The article considers the peculiarities of Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in modern Ukraine in the transformation of national priorities, which requires sociolinguistic research in temporal, spatial and personal dimensions and mandatory control and response by the state, because even a slight loss of the state language with imperial (already even hostile) Russian can lead to the same loss of position in the hybrid war with Russia, in particular in the information sphere. It is determined that the criteria for characterizing a language situation are quantitative (assuming the total number of speakers in a given situation, the number of speakers of each of the languages operating in this situation, the number of communicative areas where each of these languages operates); qualitative (indicate the nature of each language – a component of bilingualism, structural and genetic links between them, the functional significance of these components); evaluative (studied through the assessment of native speakers of a certain language and other languages of its communicative significance) – are involved in factors of language choice (which language is native, ethnic, language of communication in the family, team, region, the need to master it, language prestige) .

It is concluded that the vast majority of respondents have a positive attitude to the Ukrainian language as the state and dominant language in Ukraine, have an understanding of its functioning in public communication, media space and education, do not experience difficulties in using it. However, the danger to the Ukrainian language is the oral sphere of communication in the city (except Western Ukrainian), as well as increasing the share of those who predict official bilingualism, and not vice versa, as it was in the early 90's and as it should be in a reasonable public policy.