Geopolitical Influences and Language Contacts of the Ukrainian Speech Community of the Chelm and Podlachia Regions in the Kingdom of Poland (1815–1912)

Abstract

This paper explores language contacts, unrecorded in Ukrainian-language texts, which occurred during a period of history when Ukrainian was a minority language. In order to reconstruct language contacts, I applied the theoretical framework of the social history of language. The database was constructed using metalinguistic evidence from secondary sources. The characterization of the macro-level of language contacts from the standpoint of the sociology of language was provided through the inductive method and the method of metalinguistic evidence interpretation. The findings of the article on the variable transition of native speakers from Ukrainian as a colloquial code to oral and written forms of Polish, Russian and (occasionally) to the written form of Ukrainian are relevant for studying language contacts in subsequent periods of the social history of Ukrainian, using the linguistic evidence available from the Ukrainian-language sources.

Keywords

• Chełm and Podlachia
• Ukrainian minority language
• sociology of language
• language contacts
• status and functions of languages