Dr. Grace E. Fielder (Advanced Academia Fellow, Mar – July ‘21) will present her research under the topic:

Social Networks and Sofia Vernaculars at the Dawn of the Bulgarian National Language

on 8 April, 2021 (Thursday) at 16:30 h.

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Abstract

The current project is a historical sociolinguistic study of the spoken language of Sofia before and after 1879 when the newly formed government relocated from Veliko Tărnovo in the eastern dialect area to Sofia in the western dialect area. The goal is to both to document the language of literate speakers living in Sofia as well as investigate the social dynamics of the tension between the eastern and western variants during the process of standardization of Bulgarian in which the eastern dialect base eventually predominated. This then will be a language history “from below”, i.e. an alternative language history of the vernacular language rather than the standard, literary language as well as of marginalized speakers, particularly women. Using written letters which are the best evidence available for oral speech in 19th century Sofia, I use social network theory to examine the effect of social relationships on the maintenance of western vernacular features versus the adoption of the more socially prestigious eastern features of the standard language. It is hypothesized based on similar research on the Belfast vernacular by Milroy and on 15th century English by Bergs that strong (dense multiplex) network ties favor the maintenance of vernacular even stigmatized features while weak (loose, uniplex) network ties lead to innovation and change.

Grace E. Fielder is Professor Emerita in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona. She holds a PhD in Slavic Linguistics from the University of California at Los Angeles and her research interests are in the historical and contemporary sociolinguistics of the Balkan languages. Recent publications include “The Semiotics of Ideology: the Bulgarian Definite Article Rule” (2019), “Takin’ it to the Streets: Language Ideology in post-1989 Bulgaria” (2019), “A Constellation of Greek Adversative Connectives?” (2019), and “Bible Translation and Language Recognition on Balkan Slavic Territory” (2018). Grace was also part of the team that translated Aleko Konstantinov’s Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian (2010) into English. She serves on the National Policy Advisory Committee for the Slavic and Eurasian Language Resource Center at Duke University and has held research grants from Fulbright, IREX, ACLS and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.