Ukrainian linguistic creativity and decolonial resistance: a Twitter analysis

In this study, I conduct an analysis of Ukrainian-language tweets from 2022, the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, using the statistical software R. After a brief overview of the linguistic history of Ukraine and how it has been shaped by Russia, resulting in widespread Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism, I discuss the challenges of working with Ukrainian Twitter data and compiling a Twitter corpus concerned with Russia’s war in Ukraine. Subsequently, I conduct the analysis and visualize the results. The analysis reveals that, since Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukrainians have employed various means, such as nicknames and slurs for members of the aggressor state, decapitalization of proper nouns, the creative use of prepositions, and creative orthography and ‘Mock Russian.’ Sentiment analysis suggests that Ukrainian Twitter users respond positively to certain war-related events, demonstrating confidence and the will to resist the aggressor. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that linguistic questions are relevant for Ukrainian society at war, showing that the analysis of linguistic behavior on social media helps to shed light on how Ukrainians cope with Russia’s war of aggression and how they use social media as a tool for decolonial resistance.