Browsing by Author "Gylling, Henry"

This Master’s thesis focuses on the impact of linguistic oppression in today’s Europe, specifically the effect it has had on the development of Ukrainian and Catalan. The thesis’ aim is to elaborate on the complex forms of linguistic and cultural oppression faced by Catalonia and Ukraine under dictatorial regimes, and what attempts have been made to restore the health of these languages. While Ukrainian and Catalan are the main focus of the study, the state of Russian and Spanish is also analyzed, as both are affected by the prior languages’ revitalization success. The theory of linguistic imperialism, as developed by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, is the key theoretical framework of the study, while Fishman’s (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, GIDS for short, is the theoretical tool I use to approach the data. Using GIDS, I can approach the data systematically and determine, step by step, the state the languages are in, and how their state has evolved over time. The study relies mostly on quantitative data, which in many cases comes from national censuses and polls conducted by linguists and journalists. Qualitative data complements the quantitative data and is often used for contextualizing purposes. The results of the study find Ukrainian and Catalan in good health. Ukraine’s aggressive Ukrainization efforts have led to a greater presence of the language Ukraine in virtually every domain; simultaneously, the use and support of the Russian language has decreased in virtually every non-occupied Russian territory. Catalan’s state has meanwhile remained stable over the past 20 years, although the data suggests that the quality of the language use has declined, the language is not adopted by immigrants to the same extent as Spanish.