Tanja Petrović, born in Jagodina, Serbia, in 1974. Ph.D. from Ljubljana School in Humanities. Associate Professor in Anthropology, Department for Interdisciplinary Research, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana.
Fellow (1 September 2013 – 31 January 2014)
LOCALIZATION AND MARGINALIZATION IN DIALECT WRITING PRACTICES IN SERBIA
Research Question
When and under what conditions writing in dialect becomes capable of articulating and transmitting anonymous and de-localized messages?
Project Description
This project studies practices of writing in dialects of southern and eastern Serbia. These dialects are strongly marked and associated with an imagined authentic folk wisdom of people living in rural areas, but also with backwardness and primitivism. I am particularly interested in the ways the texts written in these dialects circulate in the public sphere, and the meanings they acquire – or trigger – when positioned outside local and vernacular contexts. Because of the firm link between writing, public sphere and un/markedness of language patterns, I mainly, but not exclusively, deal with written texts: they are situated in the broader body of cultural practices in which the use of dialects has a prominent place, such as in popular music production (pop and hip-hop), film and TV series production, etc.
Selected Publications
1) Ne tu, ne tam : Srbi v Beli krajini in njihova jezikovna ideologija v procesu zamenjave jezika [Neither here, nor there: The Serbs of Bela Krajina and their language in the process of language shift]. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2006 (Serbian translation published in 2009)
2) Whose language?: Co-ethnic migrants and contemporary linguistic identities in Serbia. In: Jasna Čapo-Žmegač, Christian Voss, Klaus Roth (eds.). Co-ethnic migrations compared: Central and Eastern European context, (Studies on language and culture in Central and Eastern Europe, Bd. 14). München; Berlin: Otto Sagner, 2010, 85-99.
3) YUROPA: Jugoslovensko nasleđe i politike budućnosti u postjugoslovenskim društvima [YUROPE: Yugoslav legacy and politics of the future in post-Yugoslav societies]. Belgrade: Fabrika knjiga, 2012