Zorana Sokolovska
Dr.
Oberassistent_in
Departement für Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung und Fremdsprachendidaktik
Rue de Rome 1
1700 Fribourg
Forschung und Publikationen
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Publications
56 Publikationen
English within language diversification discourses: tracing ideologies at European teaching conferences in the 1970s and 1980s
Zorana Sokolovska, Maria Rosa Garrido, Multilingua (2026) | Artikel -
Forschungsprojekte
Langues et histoire: un dialogue interdisciplinaire
Status: AbgeschlossenBeginn 01.07.2025 Ende 30.09.2025 Finanzierung SNF Projektblatt öffnen This project intends to investigate the relationship between language and history from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, historical sociolinguistics, language teaching, and history. It focuses in particular on “historic and socially situated moments” to which the description and analysis of language practices must be anchored. The goal is to propose interpretations and explanations of linguistic phenomena that account for broader social dynamics across both spatial and temporal dimensions (Heller 2002, p. 9).
Through interdisciplinary dialogue, the project seeks to examine how such historical moments are, or ought to be, integrated into sociolinguistic description and analysis. In other words, it aims to elucidate why and how historical elements are incorporated, thereby raising the fundamental question of the role of history in the study of languages in society: which histories are mobilized, in what ways (as object, perspective, discourse, etc.), and for what purposes. This, in turn, prompts a critical reflection on how our understanding of past events informs and shapes our interpretations of contemporary language dynamics.
Heller, M. (2002). Éléments d’une sociolinguistique critique. Éditions Didier.
A critical historiographic analysis of discourses of language “rise” and “decline”: emergence, circulation and impact in (inter)national spaces
Status: AbgeschlossenBeginn 01.04.2024 Ende 30.06.2024 Finanzierung SNF Projektblatt öffnen The goal of this research project is to examine language ideological debates throughout the period 1970-1990 in two international organisations, the Council of Europe and the European Union, from a critical sociolinguistic perspective. Their discourses on multilingualism and their recommendations for language teaching have shaped language policy in education in many European contexts since. Therefore, this sociolinguistic project seeks to historicise current language ideological debates and language-in-education policies in Swiss cantons and Catalonia in Northern Spain where the two researchers are based.
This collaborative project aims to generate new knowledge on the discourses of multilingualism that ideologically construct a “rise” or “decline” of languages at a key socio-political and historical juncture in Europe. We will analyse and compare the data collected in two international organisation archives, both physical and online, to paint a broader picture of language ideological debates in Europe and their impact on different regions. This comparative account of language discourses and policies will allow us to avoid the pitfalls of methodological nationalism, which takes the nation-state as the taken-for-granted unit of analysis and obscures the transnational circulation of discourses.
A critical historiographic analysis of discourses of language “rise” and “decline”: emergence, circulation and impact in (inter)national spaces
Status: AbgeschlossenLes langues dans la formation commerciale en Suisse : discipline, outil et discours historiques
Status: LaufendChroniques du terrain
Status: LaufendBeginn 01.01.2020 Ende Finanzierung Andere The project offers a space for methodological reflections about critical ethnographic sociolinguistic research based on researchers’ experiences. On a dedicated website, the team makes available a collection of personal tales about specific problems that raise questions for the researchers, which are seen as opportunities to make sense of, and lead toward a better comprehension of, the phenomena, institutions and actors that are studied.
The website Chroniques du terrain / Tales from the field is the result of a collaboration between sociolinguists from Fribourg and Lyon. https://www.chroniquesduterrain.org/index.php
Purpose – Expected results
These tales do not give THE answer, they primarily seek to describe and explain the processes through which the researcher finds elements of response. They reveal singular, alternative and/or complementary approaches that offer a wide array of interpretative possibilities rather than reductive formulae.