Ukrainian Refugees’ Stances Towards Russian‑Language Interpretation Services in Finland: Language, Identity and Emotion in Exile

This article investigates how Ukrainian migrants and war-displaced persons in Finland experience and evaluate interpreter-mediated encounters in public service settings following the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on 57 open-ended responses from an online sociolinguistic questionnaire conducted between November 2022 and January 2023, the study analyses how the respondents discursively construct language preferences, express emotional and ideological stances and react to the use of Russian-speaking interpreters. The methodology combines qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis and lexico-semantic stance analysis. Four dominant discourses were identified: desire, dissatisfaction, availability and emotion discourses. The desire discourse reflects normative expectations for Ukrainian-language interpretation, articulated through agentive and prescriptive expressions. The dissatisfaction discourse highlights perceived institutional insensitivity and frames the use of Russian-speaking interpreters as symbolic exclusion. The availability discourse focusses on the structural absence or insufficiency of Ukrainian-language services, while the emotion discourse captures affective responses – ranging from frustration and sadness to rare relief – towards interpreter experiences. Collectively, these discourses illustrate a post-2022 shift in the symbolic hierarchy of languages, wherein Ukrainian is discursively elevated as the language of identity, legitimacy and dignity, while Russian is increasingly problematised due to its association with aggression and trauma.