About the dissertation

Research Question

The question I am seeking to answer is "What have ethnic relations been like between Slavs and Albanians during the middle ages" and "What can the state of languages, as they are now, tell us about the cultures in the past."

Approach

There are many ways to investigate languages. This project looks at language as something of a cultural artifact - as an insight into the populations that use the languages. In particular I am looking at how languages have influenced each other - what parts of Albanian are in Slavic dialects and what parts of Slavic are in Albanian dialects, etc. Taking into account many different parts of the languages: vocabulary (Lexicon), sounds (Phonetics and Phonology), roots, prefixes, and suffixes (morphology), and grammar (Syntax), I want to understand how the language communities have influenced each other.

Why does this matter?

I think it depends on who you are. This topic has political and strategic significance in that Slavic and Albanian populations have been sources of conflict that have required international intervention in Kosovo, and Western Macedonia in the past 15 years. Understanding the relationships between these communities over the past several centuries is likely to help in finding places of mutual interests and hopefully build dialogue for future, peaceful, collaboration.

This dissertation also aims to contribute to the scholarship on Slavic and Albanian languages. Serbian, Macedonian, and Albanian have strong traditions for the scholarship on individual languages. Sometimes the aspect of how they relate to neighboring languages is poorly represented. In the same vein, dialects, and varieties of these language in general are poorly represented, and I hope that this scholarship will provide ways for appreciating the variety found in the dialects. Finally, these are also areas that are poorly represented in English literature, so I hope that my dissertation can also be a helpful tool for English language researchers, and other scholars who work with English to be able to access the work of scholars in Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian, Russian, German, etc.

Finally, why does it matter to me? In addition to what I have written above, as I am concerned with the politics and scholarship on the Balkans, I have a personal interest in these communities. I have been so blessed with good friendships in all of the countries that I have visited. This is certainly not a matter of choosing which side I am on, but rather on trying to reconcile conflicting perspectives about language, history, and communities, that I hope I can contribute to friendly relations in the future.