Open AccessDominance of Ukrainian in the bilingual setting: neurocognitive factors
Author(s) -
Svitlana Zhabotynska
Publication year - 2018
Language(s) - English
DOI - 10.26565/2227-8877-2018-87-01
Subject(s) - ukrainian , dominance (genetics) , neuroscience of multilingualism , neurocognitive , politics , psychology , cognitive dissonance , political science , social psychology , linguistics , sociology , cognition , law , biology , philosophy , biochemistry , neuroscience , gene
This paper focuses on the problem of Ukrainians’ individual bilingualism when out of the two languages – Ukrainian and Russian – the dominant one is Russian, which, being in dissonance with the political dominance of Ukrainian, causes societal tension. Its alleviation requires understanding the nature of bilingualism dependent on a number of interrelated neurocognitive and societal factors that determine dominance of the individual's particular language. The paper consecutively discusses such issues as: interaction of socio-political and individual planes of Ukrainian bilingualism as a psychological problem, neurocognitive and societal factors of linguistic dominance in their interplay, as well as applicability of these factors in creating conditions for the shifts of Ukrainian as L2 in the direction of its individual dominance. Pivotal are the prerequisites relevant for improving Ukrainian as the subdominant language for different age group defined with regard to particulars of the sensitive and post-sensitive periods for language acquisition.