Reconfiguring identities within the cityscape: ideologies of decommunization renaming in Ukraine

This study focuses on the ideologies of decommunization renaming embraced by naming commission members, whose naming motives and toponymic choices are examined within a socio-onomastic approach. Sociolinguistic concept of language ideology transformed.

Рубрика Иностранные языки и языкознание
Вид статья
Язык английский
Дата добавления 05.09.2022
Размер файла 37,5 K

Отправить свою хорошую работу в базу знаний просто. Используйте форму, расположенную ниже

Студенты, аспиранты, молодые ученые, использующие базу знаний в своей учебе и работе, будут вам очень благодарны.

This gendered aspect was explained by the commission members in quantitative terms of commemorating people's direct contributions to the city's and country's histories: “It was namely their contribution, rather than gender, that was accounted for”. The paucity of political place names is caused by the perceived instability of an official state ideology and memory politics. “By contrast to science and art, political values are changeable,” explained the philosophy expert, who also expressed hope that a small number of political toponyms would help to prevent the chance of future renaming. “There should be more local place names, and then the chance of a new renaming is smaller,” said the geography expert, who insisted on including more topographical names in the suggested list. “This must be the final renaming. These place names should be of such a kind as not to ever be changed,” emphasized one of the experts in history. He also accounted for the very little number of commemorative names referring to contemporary Ukrainian history. “As in the case with the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, let's wait for some years and then figure out exactly whose names we should commemorate,” he said. This perceived changeability of Ukraine's present, and particularly its ideological doctrine, is the reason why political place names so rarely show up in the new toponymic landscape, and that political history is thus largely unobserved and unattended to in this way.

Conclusion

This study presents an original approach to capturing a “snapshot” of the decommunization process, embodied in the renaming of toponymic cityscape. While previous research concentrated on the officially approved lists of toponyms, this study examines a preceding stage in the process--the renaming recommendations authored by a local initiative group. Besides reviewing and comparing them with the officially endorsed place names, this research offers a deeply contextualized examination of the motives behind the group's renaming suggestions. From a methodological point of view, the study combines results from a questionnaire and in-depth interviews, while also taking a socio-onomastic approach to the problem of revealing the general tendencies for naming motives, which allows us to gain an insight into how certain place names are perceived. The framework of toponymic ideologies applied in the interpretation of these motives makes it possible to go beyond defining main regional strategies of renaming urban toponymy, and give account of the reasons why these particular strategies are preferred at a local level.

Analyses of the data show that renaming arises as a reconsideration and reconstruction of national identity, where history functions as an integral structural part. This toponymic ideology brings about the iconization of certain historical periods, such as Cossack times, 1917-1921 Ukrainian struggle for independence, and pre-Soviet and Soviet industrial growth--all of which are represented as commemorative, through association with specific personal and collective names. The multi-ethnic character of Ukrainian identity is iconized in the toponymic designation of the Roma minority, while this iconization is constrained by the major renaming ideology of belonging to the place.

The leading principle being “communist vs non-communist” opposition, the naming process redefines contemporary Ukrainian identity on the “non-communist” side, which evolves out of a general projection of the “our own vs foreign” dichotomy. Nonetheless, this logic also leads to the neglect in the renaming process of such historical periods as those of Kievan Rus and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. These periods go unrecognized, and the communist period is erased altogether. Ukraine's political and military history is also largely unobserved, due to the perceived changeability of political values and the current time as a whole. Women's history is also unaccounted for, hardly represented at all at the city's local level. The Soviet-related toponymy, which characterizes local identity, is not associated with communist ideology--and therefore, is perceived in Kryvyi Rih to be “our own.”

As shown by previous studies, Ukraine's decommunization renaming shares some common trends with other post-socialist European countries. The city of Kryvyi Rih is not an exception here. This study also suggests that appeals to the pre-Soviet era, as well as parts of the Soviet history of this particular city, arise as a result of an unclear nature of more recent historical events, and the general transience of any official state ideology. The decrease of political and military place names in favor of toponymy exhibiting local topographical features, as well as peculiarities of local industry and culture, can be seen as they are called forth by a desire among renaming commission members to avoid any future renaming situations. The overall dominance of the local toponymy testifies to a growing ideology of individualization (as opposed to previous universalization) in the current process of identity formation we see across Ukraine.

Bibliography:

Azaryahu, Maoz. (1997). German reunification and the politics of street names: the case of East Berlin. Political Geography 16(6): 479-493.

Azaryahu, Maoz. (2009). Naming the past: the significance of commemorative street names. In Critical toponymies: the contested politics of place naming, Berg, Lawrence D. & Vuolteenaho, Jani (eds). Farnham: Ashgate, 53-70.

Azaryahu, Maoz. (2011). The critical turn and beyond: the case of commemorative street naming. ACME: An International E-journal for Critical Geographies 10(1): 28-33.

Basso, Keith. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among the western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Berezkina, Maimu. (2016). Linguistic landscapes and inhabitants' attitudes to place-names in multicultural Oslo. In Names and naming: people, places, perceptions and power, Puzey, Guy & Kostanski, Laura (eds.) Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 120-136.

Berg, Lawrence D. & Vuolteenaho, Jani (eds). (2009). Critical toponymies: the contested politics of place naming. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Bucher, Slavomir, Matlovic, Rene, Lukacova, Alena, Harizal, Barbora, Matlovicova, Kvetoslava, Kolesarova, Jana, Cermakova, Lenka & Michalko, Miloslav. (2013). The perception of identity through urban toponyms in the regional cities of Slovakia. Anthropological Notebooks 19(3): 23-40.

David, Jaroslav. (2013). Street names - between ideology and cultural heritage. Acta Onomastica 54: 1-8.

Field, Margaret C. & Kroskrity, Paul V. (2009). Introduction: Revealing native American language ideologies. In Native American language ideologies: beliefs, practices and struggles in Indian country, Kroskrity, Paul V. & Field, Margaret C. (eds). Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 3-28.

Gill, Graeme. (2005). Changing symbols: the renovation of Moscow place names. The Russian Review 64(3): 480-503.

Gnatiuk, Oleksiy. (2018). The renaming of streets in post-revolutionary Ukraine: regional strategies to construct a new national identity. AUC Geographica 53(2): 119-136.

Gomaniuk, Mykola. (2017). Dekomunizacijni modeli perejmenuvannya naselenykh punktiv pivdnya Ukrayiny (na prykladi Xersons'koyi oblasti) [from Ukr.: Decommunization patterns of place renaming in the south of Ukraine (a case study of Kherson region)]. Naukovyj visnyk Khersons'koho derzhavnoho universytetu [from Ukr.: Kherson State University scientific bulletin] 6: 30-37.

The Law of Ukraine. (2015а). Zakon Ukrayiny “Pro zasudzhennya komunistychnoho ta nacional- socialistychnoho (nacysts'koho) totalitarnyx rezhymiv v Ukrayini ta zaboronu propahandy yix symvoliv” [from Ukr.: The Law of Ukraine “On the censure of the communist and national-socialist

(Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the prohibition of propaganda of their symbols”]. Zakonodavstvo Ukrayiny, https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/317-19 (accessed 12 March 2020).

The Law of Ukraine. (2015b). Zakon Ukrayiny “Pro pravovyj status ta vshanuvannya pam'yati borciv za nezalezhnist' Ukrayiny u XX st.” [from Ukr.: The Law of Ukraine “On the legal status and commemoration of the strugglers for Ukraine's independence in the XX century”]. Zakonodavstvo Ukrayiny, https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/314-19 (accessed 12 March 2020).

Irvine, Judith T. (1989). When talk isn't cheap: language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2): 248-67.

Irvine, Judith T. & Gal, Susan. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Regimes of language: ideologies, polities, and identities, Kroskrity, Paul V. (ed.). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 35-84.

Korotaiev, Oleksandr. (2017). Analiz procesu dekomunizaciyi u Kryvomu Rozi [from Ukr.: The analysis of the decommunization process in Kryvyi Rih]. In Kryvorizhzhya: pohliad u mynule [from Ukr.: Kryvorizhzhia: a glance in the past], Pechenina, Natalia, Tarasov, Andrii, Shliakhtych, Roman & Finicheva, Viktoriia (red.). Kryvyi Rih: Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University Press, 134-144.

Kostanski, Laura. (2009). `What's in a name?': place and toponymic attachment, identity and dependence: a case study of the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park name restoration process. Semantic Scholar, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/%27What%27s-in-a-name%27-%3A-place-and- toponymic-identity-%3A-Kostanski (accessed 5 December 2019).

Light, Duncan. (2004). Street names in Bucharest, 1990-1997: exploring the modern historical geographies of post-socialist change. Journal of Historical Geography 30(1): 154-172.

Light, Duncan, Nicolae, Ion & Suditu, Bogdan. (2002). Toponymy and the communist city: street names in Bucharest 1948-1965. GeoJournal 56(2): 135-144.

Melnyk, Oleksandr. (2015). Naseleni miscya Kryvorizhzhya (1750-1925): Kryvoriz'kyj i Shyrokivs'kyj rajony Dnipropetrovs'koyi oblasti [from Ukr.: Settlements of Kryvorizhzhia (1750-1925): Kryvyi Rih and Shyroke neighbourhoods of Dnipropetrovsk region]. Kryvyi Rih: [without publ.].

Palonen, Emilia. (2008). The city-text in post-communist Budapest: street names, memorials, and the politics of commemoration. GeoJournal 73(3): 219-230.

Pavlenko, Aneta. (2011). Language rights versus speaker's rights: on the applicability of Western language rights approaches in Eastern European contexts. Language Policy 10(1): 37-58.

Pavlenko, Iryna. (2018). Urbanonimy yak zasib formuvannya istorychnoyi pam'yati [from Ukr.: Urbanonyms as a means of shaping historical memory]. VisnykZaporiz'koho nacional'noho universytetu [from Ukr.: Zaporizhzhia National University bulletin] 2: 58-66.Pipitone, Kaitlin E. (2019). Mapping Ideologies: Place Names in Glacier National Park. Graduate student theses, dissertations, and professional papers, https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11393 (accessed 28 November 2019).

The Order. (2016). Rozporyadzhennya holovy Dnipropetrovs'koyi oblderzhadministraciyi “Pro perejmenuvannya toponimiv u naselenyx punktax oblasti” (dodatok 4) [from Ukr.: The order of the head of Dnipropetrovsk regional state council “On the renaming of toponyms in the settlements of the region (attachment 4)], http://search.ligazakon.ua/l_doc2.nsf/link1/DN160098.html (accessed 12 December 2019).

Stipersky, Zoran, Lorber, Lucka, Hersak, Emil, Ptacek, Pavel, Gorka, Zygmunt, Kolos Arkadiusz, Loncar, Jelena, Faricic Josip, Milicevic Mirjana, Vujakovic, Ana & Hruska, Anita. (2011). Identity through urban nomenclature: eight central European cities. Geografisk Tidsskrift - Danish Journal of Geography 111(2): 181-194.

Viatrovych, Volodymyr, Shpak, Alina, Tylishchak, Volodymyr, Riabenko, Serhii, Hromenko, Serhii, Korolenko, Bohdan, Podobied, Pavlo, Budko, Serhii, Maiorov, Maksym, Karetnikov, Ihor & Horobets,

Serhii (red.). (2015). Dekomunizaciya: shho i chomu perejmenovuvaty j demontuvaty [from Ukr.: Decommunization: what and why rename and dismantle]. Kyiv: Ukrainian Institute for National Memory.

Woolard, Kathryn A. & Schieffelin, Bambi B. (1994). Language ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 55-82.

Размещено на Allbest.ru

...

Подобные документы

  • The first names of the streets of London and their relationship with the city's history. What historical reasons influenced the second elements of street names. How the tendencies of street-naming in London are similar to street-naming in Morshansk.

    презентация [3,6 M], добавлен 17.10.2010

  • Study of the basic grammatical categories of number, case and gender in modern English language with the use of a field approach. Practical analysis of grammatical categories of the English language on the example of materials of business discourse.

    магистерская работа [273,3 K], добавлен 06.12.2015

  • Extra-linguistic and linguistic spheres of colour naming adjectives study. Colour as a physical phenomenon. Psychophysiological mechanisms of forming colour perception. The nuclear and peripherical meanings of the semantic field of the main colours.

    реферат [193,7 K], добавлен 27.09.2013

  • Ideology as a necessary part of creation and existence of the state. Features of political ideology. Ideology as a phenomenon of influence on society. The characteristic of the basic ideas conservatism, neoconservatism, liberalism, neoliberalism.

    статья [15,2 K], добавлен 31.10.2011

  • Language as main means of intercourse. Cpornye and important questions of theoretical phonetics of modern English. Study of sounds within the limits of language. Voice system of language, segmental'nye phonemes, syllable structure and intonation.

    курсовая работа [22,8 K], добавлен 15.12.2010

  • Defining communicative competence. The value of communicative language teaching. On the value of audio-lingual approach. Using of humor in teaching foreign language. On the structure of an anecdotes. Using anecdotes for intermediate and advanced learners.

    дипломная работа [190,8 K], добавлен 14.01.2013

  • Different approaches to meaning, functional approach. Types of meaning, grammatical meaning. Semantic structure of polysemantic word. Types of semantic components. Approaches to the study of polysemy. The development of new meanings of polysemantic word.

    курсовая работа [145,2 K], добавлен 06.03.2012

  • The Climate of Ukraine. The Capital of Ukraine. Ukraine Traditions, ukrainian Places of Interest. The education System in Ukraine. Ukrainian Youth Nowadays. The problem of Environmental Protection in Ukraine. Ukraine and English-speaking Countries.

    реферат [944,5 K], добавлен 13.11.2010

  • The term "concept" in various fields of linguistics. Metaphor as a language unit. The problem of defining metaphor. The theory of concept. The notion of concept in Linguistics. Metaphoric representation of the concept "beauty" in English proverbs.

    курсовая работа [22,2 K], добавлен 27.06.2011

  • The nature of speaking and oral interaction. Communicative approach and language teaching. Types of communicative exercises and approaches. Games as a way at breaking the routine of classroom drill. Some Practical Techniques for Language Teaching.

    дипломная работа [72,3 K], добавлен 21.07.2009

  • The nature of onomastic component phraseological unit and its role in motivating idiomatic meaning; semantic status of proper names, the ratio of national and international groups in the body phraseology. Phraseological units with onomastic component.

    курсовая работа [16,5 K], добавлен 08.12.2015

  • The Structure of Ukrainian Government. Rights and Duties of the Ukrainian Citizens. The Constitution of Ukraine. The state language. The Verkhovna Rada's main function is making laws. The Cabinet of Ministers is the highest body of the executive power.

    контрольная работа [15,3 K], добавлен 13.11.2010

  • An analysis of homonyms is in Modern English. Lexical, grammatical and lexico-grammatical, distinctions of homonyms in a language. Modern methods of research of homonyms. Practical approach is in the study of homonyms. Prospects of work of qualification.

    дипломная работа [55,3 K], добавлен 10.07.2009

  • Language is the most important aspect in the life of all beings. General information about Proto-Indo-European language. Proto-Indo-European phonology. Comparison of modern languages of origin. All words about family, particularly family members.

    курсовая работа [30,2 K], добавлен 12.12.2013

  • Description of the basic principles and procedures of used approaches and methods for teaching a second or foreign language. Each approach or method has an articulated theoretical orientation and a collection of strategies and learning activities.

    учебное пособие [18,1 K], добавлен 14.04.2014

  • Study of lexical and morphological differences of the women’s and men’s language; grammatical forms of verbs according to the sex of the speaker. Peculiarities of women’s and men’s language and the linguistic behavior of men and women across languages.

    дипломная работа [73,0 K], добавлен 28.01.2014

  • Positive proposals needed, objections to centralisation, embrace New Zealand. Renaming the states, democratic considerations. Land management, planning, financial and geographical considerations. Local government in provincial cities and the country.

    эссе [66,2 K], добавлен 24.06.2010

  • A critical knowledge of the English language is a subject worthy of the attention of all who have the genius and the opportunity to attain it. A settled orthography is of great importance, as a means of preserving the etymology and identity of words.

    курсовая работа [28,1 K], добавлен 14.02.2010

  • Theory of the communicative language teaching. Principles and features of the communicative approach. Methodological aspects of teaching communication. Typology of communicative language activities. Approbation of technology teaching communication.

    курсовая работа [608,8 K], добавлен 20.10.2014

  • The study of the functional style of language as a means of coordination and stylistic tools, devices, forming the features of style. Mass Media Language: broadcasting, weather reporting, commentary, commercial advertising, analysis of brief news items.

    курсовая работа [44,8 K], добавлен 15.04.2012

Работы в архивах красиво оформлены согласно требованиям ВУЗов и содержат рисунки, диаграммы, формулы и т.д.
PPT, PPTX и PDF-файлы представлены только в архивах.
Рекомендуем скачать работу.