Research on language in wartime: a critical ethnographic sociolinguistic approach

In this article, I reflect on the challenges of conducting research on language in wartime Ukraine from the perspective of critical sociolinguistics. Situated within Ukraine’s nation-building debates, the issue of language has been intensified by ongoing Russian aggression. Considering the ideological framing of language as both a marker of patriotism and a site of political contestation, I follow a critical ethnographic sociolinguistic approach that foregrounds language as a political, social, and economic resource, while also emphasizing the researcher’s positionality. Drawing on my own research, which combines participant observation and biographical interviews, I demonstrate how wartime heightens symbolic and emotional investments in language. Theoretically, wartime language dynamics are underpinned by the concept of the linguistic repertoire, approached through interactional, poststructuralist, and phenomenological lenses. I advocate for methodological flexibility and trust-building techniques, and I approach the choice of interview language from a code-meshing perspective. By foregrounding language as fluid and socially embedded, this article contributes to rethinking ethnography in contexts of instability and war, suggesting that such conditions also reshape the epistemological frameworks of linguistic and social research.