Perezhivanie in the sociolinguistics of crises: Ukrainian and Russian families in Finland after the full-scale war in Ukraine

Application summary

This project examines how the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacted families with Ukrainian and Russian linguistic backgrounds in Finland. The war has triggered visible language shifts, with many Ukrainian families increasingly turning to Ukrainian, especially in public domains, while Russian families face growing fear of visibility. This complexity highlights the pressing need to investigate how the processes triggered by the war affect Ukrainian and Russian families in Finland, especially considering the stigmatized position of Russian, which may now be more confined to private communication. This study is situated in the sociolinguistics of crises, which examines, for example, the impact of COVID-19 or Brexit on multilingual families. Unlike traditional approaches that focus on family language policy (FLP) – implicit and explicit decisions about language use in the families – as a sum of its components, this project introduces the concept of perezhivanie. This approach will help to see how the families sift their experiences of the repercussions of the war through their perezhivaniya and what family language policies are shaped in this process. The project’s goals are threefold: (1) to examine how families sift their experiences of the repercussions of the war through their perezhivaniya, and what family language policies are shaped in this process, (2) to challenge methodological traditions in family multilingualism, (3) to raise awareness about the complexities and diversity of experiences of language and war. Data combines in-depth interviews, family observations, and a six-month series of collage sessions with mothers. This method provides an iterative space where participants process their experiences, while perezhivanie serves as a theoretical and analytical lens to trace how emotions, history, and environment shape family language decisions over time. Outcomes include academic publications, outreach activities, and an exhibition of the mothers’ collages.