“AND THERE WILL BE PEACE, AND THERE WILL BE SON AND MOTHER, AND THERE WILL BE FREE PEOPLE ON EARTH”: SHEVCHENKO’S WORD WITHIN THE DISCOURSE OF UKRAINIAN RESISTANCE

Halyna SІUTA,
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor,
Leading Researcher of Department of Stylistics, Language Culture and Sociolinguistics,
Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine;
4 Mykhaila Hrushevskoho St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine;
е-mail: siutagalia@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3273-1644

Heading: LINGVISTIC SHEVCHENKO STUDIES
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract
The article traces how, within the discourse of war, the reinterpretation of Shevchenko’s precedent utterances, canonical quotations, and aphorisms constituting the foundation of the national poetic canon takes place. It is argued that, under conditions of existential threat, these expressions have become a relevant resource for processing the psychological trauma of war, articulating the language of resistance, and fostering moral mobilization, while, in a broader sense, they also serve as a means of rethinking historical experience and shaping Ukrainians’ new collective memory. The study demonstrates that the linguo-mental and evaluative renewal of Shevchenko’s word transforms the key profiles of the national linguistic worldview.
The article shows that Shevchenko’s texts function as highly active instruments for the contemporary experience of war and as effective linguistic units of resistance. Their receptive renewal primarily involves a change in the perspective of perception and communicative status. This process entails their repragmatization and the acquisition of the status of mobilizational formulas within national linguistic practice. During the war, Shevchenko’s utterances have undergone substantial functional and receptive transformation. They have ceased to be elements of ritualized citation and have instead become active linguistic units of resistance.
The receptive renewal of Shevchenko’s quotation in wartime is associated with the dehistoricization of distance (the quotation ceases to function as a “text of the nineteenth century” and instead operates as a unit of the language of the present), repragmatization (the poetic formula becomes a direct instruction for the present, no longer merely describing struggle but calling for it), and decolonial interpretation (the precedent imperial context of Shevchenko’s oeuvre is projected onto the contemporary Russian-Ukrainian war, creating the effect of historical continuity of resistance). In wartime, Shevchenko’s quotations function not only as carriers of emotional intelligence and linguistic-cultural memory, but above all as linguistic units of resistance that glorify struggle and shape a sense of historical continuity.
Key words: Shevchenko’s precedent utterances, war discourse, language of resistance, transformation of the canon.

REFERENCES
Yermolenko, S.Ya. (2016). T. Shevchenko’s language creation in the context of Ukrainian self-identification. The territory of Taras Shevchenko’s language. Kyiv: Vyd. dim Dmytra Buraho (in Ukr.).
Nyshchuk, Ye. (9 March, 2019). “The fire of the stubborn does not burn”. Taras Shevchenko and the Ukrainian state. Radio Svoboda. https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/29812138.html (in Ukr.).
Sverstiuk, Ye. (1993). Shevchenko and time. Prodigal sons of Ukraine. Kyiv: Znannia Ukrainy (in Ukr.).
Siuta, H.M. (2017). Tsytatnyi tezaurus ukrainskoi poetychnoi movy XX stolittia. Kyiv (in Ukr.).
Franko, I. (1981). Shevchenko, his life and works. Franko, I. Collected works: in 50 vols. (Vol. 26, pр. 36). Kyiv: Naukova dumka (in Ukr.).