Bilingualism and the Figures of Postcolonial Speech: Cultural Transfers of Modern Ukrainian Prose

Bilingualism is described as a communicative space in which official and alternative speech, imperial discourse, and anti-colonial resistance coexist. The tension between them creates the ground for numerous figures of postcolonial speech. It is characterized by a subversive, self-revealing tone, a hidden pathos of debunking the respectful attitude to the language of the colonizer. It is also about the maturation of Ukrainian literature in the national language in terms of hybrid identity, the integration of the upper circle of society in the imperial circles. The asymmetrical relationships between identifying oneself with the empire, the plots of official careers, official biographies, independent language behavior, and mental space are traced. The divergence between following the distorted national and psychological Little Russian identity and the historical memory of ethnic roots, the place of origin of Ukrainian statehood, and the connection with ancient traditions are revealed. The phenomenon of marginality appeared in the crossing of these components, with an almost inseparable center and periphery. They constantly cross and create the phenomena of diglossia, multilingualism, speech interference. The interaction of the donor language and the recipient language is based on the principle of transfer, recognition, assimilation on the margins of the discourse of power and its transformation into speech with opposite meanings. The complex language map of Ukraine illustrates the permanence of imperial policy, which only changed the forms of its presence in the subordinate territories and according to the conjuncture moved the assimilation boundaries towards complete absorption, appropriation, or apparent demonstration of ethnic identity. The application of the transfer methodology allows us to understand the complexity of nowadays integrational processes in Ukraine in the context of the cultural and historical situation of the first half of the XIX century.