Mariia Ilchenko
Through war and displacement, Ukrainians from Donbas and Crimea have renegotiated their disrupted linguistic identities. This study explores three personal stories of switching from Russian to Ukrainian as a main language. It shows how displacement introduces new environments and relationships that influence the process of language transition and language ideologies. The concepts of othering, linguistic imperialism, and verbal hygiene help to explain how displacement can create new conceptions of the ideal L2-self, recentre Ukrainian in everyday life, and create a new social order through language norms.