This dissertation examines the role of everyday language in the development of local understandings of social change within the context of political and economic transformation. The study focuses on a community of Ukrainian dialect speakers located near the Romanian border in the ethnically and linguistically diverse Zakarpattja region of Ukraine. Residents of this village view recent political and economic changes, including the establishment of independent Ukraine, the shift to toward a market economy and the increasing importance of migrant labor in the face of widespread domestic unemployment as contributing to a continuum of social change that began with the arrival of Soviet power to the area in the late 1940's. The central question that this dissertation addresses is: How do the structures of everyday conversation contribute to local recognition and interpretation of change?