Dissertation Research: Ideologies of Standardization: Differentiation and Socialization in Bosnian Schools

Alaina Lemon博士指导的研究生Kristin J. Swagman的这项研究项目将探讨不同语言课程对波斯尼亚小学儿童语言使用和态度的影响。她将记录两所不同小学一年级和四年级儿童的语言实践，一所在萨拉热窝，一所在塞尔维亚共和国城市帕莱。通过课堂录音和转录，与儿童的角色扮演任务和社会语言学访谈与教师和家长，研究者试图确定不同的民族主义课程是否成功地创造或加强语言差异沿着种族线。虽然前南斯拉夫的大量语言学研究都集中在标准语言上，但很少有研究关注标准形式在各种日常环境中的使用、执行或避免。本研究旨在通过研究波斯尼亚的标准形式和方言之间的关系，为区域学术研究做出贡献。南斯拉夫六个共和国中的四个共和国的语言被称为塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语，并在社会主义国家时期被正式承认为一种语言。1991年南斯拉夫解体后，塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语分裂成四种可能不同的语言：波斯尼亚语、克罗地亚语、塞尔维亚语和黑山语。随着通过不同的标准化过程来区分这些语言的努力的进行，围绕着这些语言的定义有很多争论。在关于波斯尼亚教育改革的讨论中，特别强调了界定语言之间差异的问题。目前，波斯尼亚教育官员正在与国际组织合作，制定和实施一个共同的核心课程，以确保全国各地的学生学习共同的材料。然而，父母仍然有权选择在与现有课程不同的课程中教授他们的孩子一组所谓的国家科目。实际上，这意味着波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那使用三种不同的课程。这项研究将通过探讨小学生的语言实践和语言意识形态及其与种族差异意识形态的关系，提供关于学校如何成功或不成功地为重新融合的波斯尼亚奠定基础的人种学证据。因此，它将有助于语言人类学中越来越多的文献，这些文献试图理解语言差异如何映射到社会差异，并试图更好地理解儿童如何看待这种关系。

This research project by graduate student Kristin J. Swagman supervised by Dr. Alaina Lemon will explore the effects of different language-based curricula on the language use and attitudes of primary school children in Bosnia. She will document the linguistic practices of 1st and 4th grade children in two different primary schools, one in Sarajevo and one in the Serb Republic city of Pale. Through the recording and transcribing of classroom sessions, role-playing tasks with children and sociolinguistic interviews with teachers and parents, the researcher seeks to determine whether or not different nationalist curricula are successful in creating or reinforcing linguistic difference along ethnic lines. While a great deal of linguistic research in the former Yugoslavia has focused on standard language, much less research has looked at how standard forms are used, performed or avoided in a variety of everyday contexts. This research aims to contribute to regional scholarship by studying the relationship between standard forms and dialects in Bosnia. The language of four of the six Yugoslav republics was known as Serbo-Croatian and officially recognized as one language during the era of the socialist state. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, Serbo-Croatian has split into four potentially different languages: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin. Much debate surrounds the definition of these languages as efforts to differentiate them through diverging standardization processes proceed. The question of defining differences among languages is particularly emphasized in discussions about education reform in Bosnia. Currently Bosnian education officials, in conjunction with international organizations, are working to develop and implement a common core curriculum designed to ensure that students across the state learn common material. Yet parents maintain the right to opt that their children be taught a so-called national group of subjects in a curriculum different than that already being taught. In practice, this means that three different curricula are in use in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This research will provide ethnographic evidence about how schools are or are not successful in laying a foundation for a re-integrated Bosnia by exploring the linguistic practices and language ideologies of primary school children and their relationship to ideologies of ethnic difference. As such it will contribute to a growing body of literature in linguistic anthropology that seeks to understand how linguistic difference is mapped onto social difference and attempt to understand better how children view that relationship.