Ukrainian women and obscene language as a way of resistance in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war

29 settembre, Interventi di apertura, 1:02:36

Mariya Shcherbyna, Department of Philosophy, Culture Studies and Information Activities, V. Dahl’s East UkrainianNational University Visiting professor

Keywords: feminist discourse, womantory, obscene language, personal narratives, Russia-Ukraine war

Since the beginning of Russia's full-fledged invasion of Ukraine both the media and academia have turned to personal narratives to understand how the war has changed the identities of Ukrainians. The roles of Ukrainian women have become extremely diverse. The number of women in the military force reached 32 thousand, which is one of the largest amount in the world; the Ukrainian volunteer movement - both military and civilian - is also predominantly female, and, according to UN Women and CARE International, 90 percent of temporarily displaced Ukrainian adults are women, meaning that they have become de-facto single mothers, the sole breadwinners and caregivers of families, including their elderlies, children, and pets. The female perspective - women's experience and women's view here and
now, after the active - and visible - participation of individual women and women's organizations in critical for the state activities during the war, can no longer be overlooked as auxiliary to history and secondary. Thought about women’s liberation from the social role of a compliant girl, both verbally and nonverbally, and found their ground in the turbulent times - and so we came to the topic of the study. We try to describe how the war-induced changes have affected the (self)perception of Ukrainian women through the use of obscene language, which can help to survive in the new reality with the lack of resources, increased workload, and emotional stress. We will analyze personal narratives of Ukrainian women whose life has been drastically changed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It studies how the new reality has been shaping the new gender socialization which influence women’s language identity, in particular, through obscene language, and how this affected their self-perception and social expectations. From this perspective, we try to grasp the changes in female speech after the beginning of the war with Russia in 2014 and after the Russian full-fledged invasion on Ukraine in 2022. It also sketches the major functions of expletives in female speech in the army and in the civilian setting. This research is based on 27 semi-structured interviews conducted in September-October 2022 among the Ukrainian women (combatants, volunteers, refugees and women who chose to stay in their constantly bombing cities), that we analysed through the lens of the combination of the structural and dialogic narrative analysis. Keywords: feminist discourse, womantory, obscene language, personal narratives, Russia-Ukraine war

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