Shevchenko’s word vs Kulish’s word: sources of national identity

S.Ya. Yermolenko
Corresponding Member of the NAS of Ukraine, Professor, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Head of the Department of Stylistics, Culture of the Language and Sociolinguistics, Institute of the Ukrainian Language of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
4 Hrushevskyi St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine
Е-mail: kultura-slova@ukr.net
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9916-4915

Heading: Researches
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: The word, the native word are key concepts in the poetry texts and letters of Shevchenko and Kulish, as well as in Kulish’s journalism. Shevchenko textually reveals the meaning of these statements in the spiritual life of a person, people. Kulish emphasizes the intrinsic, psychological content of each national language, on its specific division of the world the speaker studies. Writers’ bilingualism practice helped to identify this specificity.

Social and political living conditions of Ukrainians in the Nineteenth Century cause aggravation of social and national relations in the Russian Empire. Ukrainians, populists, nationals, cultural figures, cosmopolitans, chauvinists, separatists – such an open list of names of people who have different views on the issues of free development of Ukrainian culture and language.

Common motives and their structural and functional load in the language of Shevchenko and Kulish determined the individual and collective experience of the writers, influenced the awareness of the linguistic and national identity of Ukrainians. Historical time formed a dictionary of characteristic linguistic and evaluation formulas to denote concepts relevant to society at that time.

In the works of Shevchenko and Kulish, the romanticization of Ukraine’s past was projected into different language sources. Kulish saw the beginnings of Ukrainian history in Kyiv Rus, his poetry often used church Slavic words, word forms, and Shevchenko idealized, according to Kulish, the Cossack era, which predetermined the poet’s interest in the historical vocabulary, characteristic phraseology of poetic language.

The defeat of the Cyril and Methodius Society, the exile of its members, and the ban on publications in the Ukrainian language could not stop the objective process of growing national and language consciousness. The traditions of Shevchenko’s and Kulish’s language found continuation in the literary practice of the subsequent periods of literary language development. Common and different views of the Ukrainian intelligentsia on the assessment of the role of translated literature as a source of Europeanization of the literary language revealed.

Keywords: language as a means of self-knowledge, 19th century Ukrainian literary language, artistic texts, letters, Shevchenko, Kulish, native word, our language, Cossack romance, common language, translation.

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