We want to go all the way to the beginning of your career: Do you still remember why you decided to study German studies?
Yes, I have to start the story even before primary school. I grew up in the city centre of Lviv/Lemberg, and in western Ukraine German has been a tradition since imperial and royal times, although in Soviet times foreign languages were not important. Russian was the language everyone was supposed to learn. In school, children had perhaps one hour of foreign language lessons per week, but translators and language teachers were needed and so there were schools with extended foreign language lessons. In Lviv there were two such schools with extended German lessons and since my parents noticed that I have a good memory, they sent me to such a school. By the way, it is the oldest school in Ukraine, now Lyceum No. 8 in Lviv. This is the school that the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem also attended. The writer lived two streets away from the street where I grew up and we also walked the same way to school that Lem described in his book "The High Castle".
Student exchange in the GDR
I always wanted to be a singer. I played a Ukrainian folk instrument, the bandura, for 8 years. The Cossack in the Türkenschanzpark holds it on his lap. My parents were not entirely enthusiastic. They kind of pushed me in the direction of German, I still resisted a bit. But in 1986, still in Soviet and GDR times, I came to the GDR on a school exchange. And that trip changed everything! It's so funny, I was talking to a colleague at our Institute of German Studies, he was in the GDR the same year as an Austrian exchange student. He said that it was dreary, so grey and so terrible. And I told him, "Yes, just imagine what life was like in the Soviet Union!" I was a Soviet schoolgirl in the GDR and for me it was the wild west, it was so colourful. I remember I was at Alexanderplatz and there were punks standing there. I had never seen punks before, they were banned in the Soviet Union. I bought flowered shoes twice in a bigger size than I needed because they didn't have my size. Everything was grey and black in our house. We were also standing at the Alexander Tower one evening and I looked out over the sparsely lit East Berlin and the neon-coloured and flashing West Berlin. Until then I had believed everything that was said in school: Capitalism is human exploitation, a cruel system, and a dreary life. And I thought, it can't be that bad if it's so colourful. And then I wanted to come back to the GDR.
I came back and had a plan: I wanted to travel, but it was difficult to travel. Within the Soviet Union it was, but not to the other socialist countries. People from these countries, on the other hand, were interestingly already able to travel, we also noticed that with friends from Poland or the Czech Republic on OeAD exchanges. But I heard - perhaps my mother did tell me intentionally so that I would listen - the son of an acquaintance is a translator/interpreter of German, he is a tour guide and travels with tour groups to the GDR and the former Czechoslovakia. And that's when I thought to myself, I'll also study German so I can travel.
My husband Tymofiy and I studied together. In Ukraine it's like in the universities of applied sciences, there are fixed groups. We met at the beginning of our studies. In the Soviet Union, studies didn't begin with introductory lectures, but with hard work on a collective farm near Brody, where Joseph Roth was born. We worked in a preservation plant sorting tomatoes, cutting apples for applesauce, and so on. And that's where we met. We started studying in 1988, just before the disintegration. We still had subjects like "The History of the Communist Party" in our first year, although the truth was already written everywhere in the newspapers. But the university lecturer still taught according to the old guidelines, it was an exciting time. We were then able to travel unhindered during our studies after the disintegration.
Why did you choose Austria?
My great-grandfather lived a long time, and I was 14 when he died. When I was about 13, he told me about the First World War. He was lucky, he was short-sighted, and they didn't send him to the front like the other great-grandfather I didn't meet. He said: "I was lucky. Because I didn't see so well, I looked after prisoners in Vienna." And I didn't even ask him about Vienna because that was something like Mars for me. Now I'm sorry I didn't ask, but I asked him this: "Grandpa, is Vienna much further away than Moscow?" And he said, "No, Vienna is twice closer than Moscow!" and that blew my mind. How can a capitalist state - we were in this discourse: capitalism = enemy - how can a hostile capitalist country be closer than "our capital Moscow". Coming to a capitalist country was unlikely. Vienna, that won't do, and that's where we've landed now, of all places!
The first Austrian word and “Erdäpfelknödel” (potato dumplings)
At the end of the last year of my studies in 1992, the first Western professor to come to us was Peter Wiesinger, the well-known Germanist, who gave a lecture on Austrian German. This lecture had a great impact on me. I sat there thinking, how could it be that I can't understand this, that Austrian German is so much different from what I had learned for so long at school and university. I can still remember the first word, "Erdäpfel" (“earth apples” for potatoes). I thought it was so poetic. He also explained Austrian German to us using culinary recipes as examples. The words Germ (yeast), Erdäpfel. He gave us a recipe for potato dumplings and I cooked it at home the same evening and my parents liked it very much. Dad said that my great-grandmother also cooked exactly such dumplings in his childhood and that's understandable because she still learned to cook in the imperial and royal days.
The OeAD in Ukraine
In 1992, not only the Austrian Library opened in Lviv, but also the branch office of the Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe. That was the office that brought the first OeAD scholarships to Ukrainian academia.
I was so fascinated by Austrian German. At the end of my studies, I knew that we had difficult times. Hardly anyone spoke foreign languages. People with foreign language skills were worth their weight in gold and there were many offers from the business world. It was then suggested to us (note: Oksana and her husband) to do the dissertation programme. I was torn. I wanted to travel and translate, but my parents told me very explicitly: "No, if they offer you the PhD programme, do it. There won't always be such difficult times, one day it will be good to work in academia." Then, from 1993 onwards, I started working in this office myself and worked there for three years until it closed in 1996, looking after many, many OeAD scholarship holders. I somehow feel like I belong to your team.
How Oksana ended up with researching curse words
Because Austrian German fascinated me so much, I applied for an OeAD short scholarship for Viennese in 1994 and wanted to find a dissertation topic in Austria at the same time. The topic should be lively and little researched. On an excursion to the Wachau, we then sat at the Heuriger (wine tavern), of course. I had seen that Viennese is relatively well researched and was a bit at a loss. The two months were almost over, and I hadn't found a topic yet. So, we sat at the Heuriger and exchanged the results of our research in Austria. I said that I still didn't know what to research. I had now looked through so many dictionaries, I already knew my way around Viennese so well. There are so many curse words. And then someone said, "Yes, then just use the curse words!" And I said, yes, why not! Everybody laughed and I really went back to Ukraine and went to see my PhD supervisor, who was still a dean from Soviet times and a strict, buttoned-up man. I thought, oh dear, what will he say? But this "wind of change" influenced him so much that he said, "Yes, why not! Now everything is open, everything can be explored. But Oksana, you need 2,000 examples. The curse words can be in different contexts - a curse word can also be a term of endearment - but you need at least 2,000 examples. And where you can find them, I don't know."
I then learned from Tymofiy that the Austrian Library existed and, after asking my boss and other friends from Austria who was swearing, I searched there purposefully and looked through whole passages and spent a lot of time there. I had been told to look at Thomas Bernhard, Werner Schwab, Elfriede Jelinek or H.C. Artmann. So, I collected my material there in the Austrian Library, but also during other short scholarships in Austria until 2001. In total, I had short scholarships from the OeAD three times.
What influence did the scholarship stay have on your personal and professional development?
The scholarships have influenced me a lot. There is also another longer-term impact of the OeAD scholarships that you might not even know about. For example, we have met so many interesting scholarship holders from other countries here, including from our hometowns in Ukraine. In 2003, I had the idea of organising a lecture series in Lviv and inviting scholars who live nearby and can come easily. There are so many people doing research on interesting topics of Austrian culture, history, Ukrainian-Austrian relations. Many well-known historians, natural scientists and experts came, and I organised it together with Andreas Wenninger from the Austrian Cooperation Office in an art district in the middle of Lviv. It took place in 2004-2006 and 2008-2012. Two volumes were published, "The Journey to Europe" and "The New Journey to Europe". When Elfriede Jelinek received the Nobel Prize, Tymofiy also gave two lectures that were very well attended.
When I think about it now, over 70 % of the participants were OeAD scholarship holders. It also extends into our private lives: we met the godfather of our elder son as an OeAD scholarship holder and sealed the deal over a glass of punch on Rathausplatz. He is a historian.
The “Wiener Vorlesungen” (Vienna Lectures) as motivation
My book emerged from the Vienna Lectures. Back then, in my scholarship days, an unexplored topic was of course a challenge and sometimes quite complicated in the research work. I remember it was autumn or winter, such dreary weather, and I came chilled through from the library. Then I saw posters of the Vienna lectures. I thought at the time that I would rather go into business. My parents had no right to decide for me. Ukraine had been independent for three years and times were still so difficult, I wanted to quit science and become an interpreter. Then I saw the posters of the Viennese lectures and thought, maybe I can continue my research and I will also be invited to a Viennese lecture. 25 years passed and I got an invitation!
You deal scientifically with cursing. In the meantime, you are also a mother of two sons. Do your sons help you to keep up with the latest developments in your field of research?
When we came here 10 years ago, I was not yet familiar with youth slang. The older son had already taught me one or two youth slang terms, and I especially discovered these ritual insults back then. But with the little one, who is now 14, he somehow doesn't teach me anything. I've been a science ambassador since 2015 and I'm in schools about three times a term doing workshops with kids. I had a science communication programme from the Austrian Science Fund for one and a half years and was at twelve Viennese schools. I collected practically all my evidence of curse words in youth language myself through surveys.
But there is some relation to the children, I think I take away the appeal of the forbidden. They can ask me anything, especially about German curse words. I can pronounce the worst ones without inhibitions. Many people feel this way and I have an explanation why we often find curse words in our mother tongue stronger. In the mother tongue, we often first learn this emotional meaning. Without knowing what the word means, children are confronted with the strong emotional meaning. The child picks up on a word and comes home, says it and the parents say: "You mustn't say that!". This shapes our perception and perception of curse words.
With Ukrainian, it was different. Why do I say was, because then the war came. When I say war, I think of 2014. And I remember, a month after the Krym was occupied, an anti-Putin chant arose, which I also describe in my book. In Ukrainian, it's a word borrowed from Russian. It sounds terrible. It sounded so terrible to me until 2014, I wouldn't have put it in my mouth. The word still sounds awful to me, but fans of two football teams in Ukraine united and sang this chant before the game and it has become an internet meme, has been printed on T-shirts and become a slogan of resistance. Similarly as when the broad war, as it is now called, has broken out. There was this chant when a Russian military ship came to Snake Island and asked the soldiers to surrender. This was the Ukrainian soldier's spontaneous reaction. An aggressive call to vent negative emotions. In the following days, additional functions were added, such as the empathic, cooperative function: we stick together, we don't let ourselves be intimidated. Humour also plays an important role there.
From this, we see how an expletive loses strength in terms of the acts that the person the expletive refers to commits. To me, the word Putin now sounds worse than a real curse word. When Putin came to Vienna in 2014, incidentally his first visit to the West after the occupation, he was received with a red carpet, which made us very sad. There were thousands of Ukrainians at these protests. I couldn't talk for days because I was shouting so loudly. My children were there. A few months before, I could not have imagined that I would say such a brutal word in the presence of my children. But this is a good example of how a curse word pales in the face of the cruelty of a person it denotes.
Oksana does not run out of research topics
Ten years ago, a colleague at the Department of German Studies said I've been researching this topic for 20 years, it is always about verbal aggression, I always find something, but maybe the topics will run out soon. But then I discovered youth slang, then language and Corona followed. Verbal aggression or expressive lexis also played an important role. I am now working on two articles: "Language and Corona" and "Language and War". Then followed science communication. After about 25 years, I felt that I now wanted to see some practical use. That was the science communication programme then. When I was in schools, I talked to the teachers and many of them said that all this content that I cover with children is so interesting. It would have been good for them as students at university to have had a course like this where they were prepared for the challenges in everyday school life.
I have been teaching a course at the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Vienna for Master's students for three terms now. The intercultural characteristics play a very big role, starting from the cultures of scolding to the functions that this scolding fulfils. In many languages, for example, there are functions that don't exist in German, like the pause-filling usage. In Viennese, this is equivalent to "Oida" (old man).
You are also in contact with our colleagues from Young Science and act as a Young Science ambassador
Here I come into the class and say, "My name is Oksana etc., I'm from the university, I'm a Germanist." And some children laugh and say, "Germanist and she talks with an accent." Some teachers have apologised to me because the children, maybe because they grow up with German television, are not used to it. But then again, many teachers say it was very important. Many children with a migrant background have never seen a woman with a migrant background who made it to university. They immediately felt so inspired that it is possible with an accent.
The children are about to choose a career and they always ask me why I studied German and became a linguist and whether you can earn a lot of money there. They always find it particularly exciting when I say that it was impossible to travel in the Soviet Union. Then they say, the travel ban, that's like North Korea! Yes, it's comparable. For me, German was the key to freedom.
When you are in schools as a Young Science Ambassador and talk to the students, do they understand themselves better or change their behaviour?
Yes, I hope so. I am in contact with teachers. They also confirm that the children were very influenced by my visit. For example, the ubiquitous "retarded". I come to school and hear "That's retarded", "You're retarded", "But Professor, she's not offended when I say that, that's what we say among ourselves". And then I say: “But when you say that, it's an indirect insult to people out there who are really limited in their physical and mental attributes." And when children realise that, they don't think about it beforehand - that's where we are with the emotive meaning, that's in the foreground with curse words; the real meaning takes a back seat - then they often decide not to use those words.
One teacher told me that they set up a piggy bank and the children have to pay 50 cents for each "retarded". It's a matter of habit, it doesn't happen overnight. I try to teach the children that it is possible to work on their language and that it depends on them, and that you can also consciously break the habit of using certain words. In primary school you can still curse very well with neutral words. I try to teach them that negative emotions are normal. These do not have to be expressed with vulgar curse words, e.g. everyone knows "Krawuzi Kapuzi" (an outcry used by a popular clown in Austria). In kindergarten they see a lot of cursing like "You flying tomato" through the story of the coconut. The children then like to experiment with these neutral words and learn to express emotions. We always learn that it is good to talk constructively, like "Be quiet, I still want to finish my homework". All in the spirit of non-violent communication. One should recognise one's own needs, and then express them constructively.
Do you feel that verbal aggression has increased because of the war or Covid?
In my projects, I have often received advice from evaluators to avoid reactance so that the children don't feel affirmed to perhaps curse more after a project. That's not true at all because the appeal of cursing is to get around of what is forbidden. When I come into the class and say we are now going to talk about cursing, I take away this forbidden thing and the teachers also say that the children are more careful with each other because there is also a lot of talk about empathy. We address concrete situations, such as cheeky first graders who call them names. Then we think about why they are cursing, how they felt when they came to the new school after primary school. They say then that they were unsure whether they would make friends, etc. Therefore, the first graders are simply afraid, and they are cursing out of fear. That is one of the causes. Or as a self-expression: I am cursing to show that I am a strong and not a weak girl.
If you come to school as an outsider and hear the worst curse words, you would get the Impression that there is more cursing. But the teachers at school don't confirm that. If you look at the vocabulary, there are a lot of curse words in school, but you can't consider every use as verbal violence. They are in fact very often fictitious forms such as cursing jokes to show among friends that the friendship is tight and that one can cope with these puns. Or as self-promotion: I'm cool! All of that counts as one of these fictional forms. But on the other hand, there are also forms that can be used for verbal violence that do not involve curse words. For example, I have observed that national scolding, which was still common 10, 15 years ago in my first project, has decreased. Now the children don't mention it at all. On the one hand, this could be a good sign of cultural sensitisation. On the other hand, it would have to be researched whether this has not taken on other forms, with neutral statements such as: "You don't belong to us, you're not from here."
Verbal aggression in social media
What is new compared to 15 years ago is verbal aggression in social media.
New forms such as violence in social media did not exist 30 years ago, but this violence did take place in real life - even if not to this extent. Even if there was no talk of bullying in the past, this form of psychological or verbal violence existed, it just didn't have a name. But here we can see how language creates awareness of certain phenomena. I was once asked by a journalist if I had ever been bullied. At first, I said no. But then I remembered my Soviet childhood at the end of the 1970s, and a girl whose mother was a party leader at school and who believed she was better than us. We were supposed to carry her school bag and I was the only one who refused. I'm still proud of that now. She then turned everyone against me and only after two or three days did another girl also refuse to carry the bag. That was the beginning of a very long and beautiful friendship. I also explain this to the children: Dare to speak up if you see a case of psychological, physical, or verbal violence. Dare to take that person's side. You can change a lot as an individual. Many people say, "What can I do?" This is what we see in Russia, this passivity. Many are silent, many are afraid. Russians are afraid of the policemen's truncheons, while Ukrainians protested in Cherson when the tanks drove through the city.
Cursing is banned again in Russia today. On 1 July 2014 - when Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine escalated, suddenly a law was introduced - "ban on curse words in mass media, literature, plays". Many wondered what that was all about. And I interpreted it in my own way, namely that by highlighting this verbal aggression, Putin wants to conceal the physical aggression. When I went on Facebook on 24 February, when the war broke out, all I saw were imprecations. An imprecation is not a very common speech act in German, if it is, it's jokingly in Viennese: "You should get scabies on your butt and too short hands to scratch." These are, by the way, loan translations from Yiddish. Yiddish is known for these two-part poetic imprecations. They have been translated into many languages, including Ukrainian. The most famous, for example, is "Let all your teeth fall out except one, so you know what a toothache feels like." It is always wishing a calamity and also reinforcing it, as if that were not enough. In Ukrainian, imprecations are very common.
All first reactions to bombings on 24 February were imprecations, directed at the Russian soldiers and Putin. I wrote a text for the newspaper Die Presse: "Language in wartime: Damn you! Die a miserable death! Croak!" The text appeared in March, two to three weeks after the war broke out, but you could already see this dynamic. Cursing is a passive speech act. The fulfilment of the imprecation is not dependent on the speaker himself, or the speaker is not responsible himself, but higher or lower forces. And this was an expression of the people's bewilderment at that moment, their powerlessness in the face of the cruel situation. In Tymofiy's case, these were very beautiful imprecations, they also appear in the text. And then came active speech acts: Insults, demands to the occupiers. At the end, humour was added. Humour helps to get through difficult and cruel situations. If laughing is added to the name-calling, then the cathartic function is twice as strong, because both mechanisms - the laughing, the name-calling - have this cathartic effect and together it is intensified.
I'm on the phone with my parents and I hear the siren and I say to them, "You have to hide and get to safety." Dad then says that they call it "symphony". There are countless examples of this humour. I have already collected a lot of evidence and am now also working on a scientific paper on the subject of language and war.
What tips would you give students in general who want to come to Austria?
You should network as much as possible. It saves time with other hurdles when you want to organise something. Then you know someone who has been there with you and knows which places or universities you should contact. These personal contacts are very important for me. Network with other OeAD scholarship holders from other countries in Austria. Later, this can take the form of interesting projects that you can't yet imagine.
Academic titles still play an important role in Austria. You should always look at what's on a business card: Mag. Mag. Ing. and list everything when you write an email. That’s already very important. My children also felt that at the doctor's recently. After I handed over the e-card, the tone changed immediately: "Yes, Dr. Havryliv!" My son was impressed that I was addressed like that, and I said, "You see, studying is worth it, you're treated quite differently.
Austrians and Viennese are not as grumpy as they claim. They want to conform to the stereotype. There is this competition that only Parisians are more unfriendly than us. You should learn the most important words and phrases as well as Austrian expressions. This is also a polite sign and helps in communication. Otherwise, you often don't understand something. I can remember when I wanted to buy carrots at the Naschmarkt in 1994, as I learned, and the seller gave me red beets.
In Austria, I speak the way I do, with grown-up people I never notice that they look at me strangely because of my accent. In Germany, on the other hand, when Tymofiy taught at the Humboldt University, I came with the children in the summer. My son was 8 years old and Kung Fu Panda was so popular. There was a Kung Fu school just around the corner and I wanted to enrol my son. I called and tried hard to speak this German I learned at university. I thought I could do it well and the man on the phone said, "Hello Kathi, is that you?" And I thought: Wow, he thinks I'm a Kathi! I already speak accent-free German. I said, "No, it's not Kathi." And then he said, "Ah, I thought you were a friend of mine from Hungary, she also has an accent like that.”
Links:
Interview with Timofiy Havryliv
Oksana and Timofiy about the importance of turning to science during difficult times
