Palatal violence: Sonic gatekeeping and enemy‐making in wartime Ukraine

Abstract Within 2 days of Russia's full‐scale invasion of Ukraine, a single word— palianytsia , a Ukrainian round loaf—became a phonetic test separating Ukrainians from Russians. The article traces how a culinary term was enregistered as a wartime shibboleth that structurally marks the very citizens it was meant to protect as enemies. Combining acoustic–phonetic and digital discourse analysis, it shows the war rhematizing Ukrainian–Russian phonological divergence into innate bodily deficiency. Palianytsia makes racialized wartime nationalism audible as a form of sonic gatekeeping that cannot distinguish Russophone Ukrainians from Russian saboteurs.