Table Of ContentUCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Pride and Pragmatism: Linguistic and Political Ambivalence in the Everyday Lives of Serbian
Students and Teachers
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6kd5p20m
Author
George, Rachel
Publication Date
2014
Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Pride and Pragmatism: Linguistic and Political Ambivalence in the
Everyday Lives of Serbian Students and Teachers
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Anthropology
by
Rachel L. George
2014
© Copyright by
Rachel L. George
2014
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Pride and Pragmatism: Linguistic and Political Ambivalence in the
Everyday Lives of Serbian Students and Teachers
By
Rachel L. George
Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles, 2014
Professor Alessandro Duranti, Chair
This dissertation investigates the everyday lives and experiences of Serbian youth born
amidst war and the breakup of Yugoslavia. It argues that historical and political events in Serbia
have inspired widespread ambivalence about national pride and cosmopolitanism, how to restore
Serbia’s international reputation, and the ability of citizens to enact societal change. Such
ambivalence manifests itself through different genres of speaking and types of social encounters.
The dissertation explores the ways in which a new generation takes up and reinterprets recent
social upheaval amidst changing local, European, and global landscapes.
The study draws upon one year of fieldwork in a prestigious high school in Belgrade,
Serbia, where I recorded history, civics, and literature courses, videotaped and conducted
participant-observation with students and their peers outside of class, interviewed students and
teachers, examined textbooks and other school materials, and analyzed students’ interactions on
ii
Facebook. This ethnographic corpus offers rich insights into 1) Inter-generational constructions
of histories and futures, both personal and collective; 2) Talk itself as simultaneously a symbol of
futility and an instrument of political action; and 3) Social media as a site for youth to express
their ambivalence, experiment with new connections between language and identity, and
overcome feelings of isolation and stigma that still weigh on the previous generation.
Analysis of the corpus suggests that ambivalence in Serbia is historically-grounded, is
constructed through a range of linguistic features and types of interaction, and has been
experienced as alternately constraining and empowering. Students and teachers oscillate
between nostalgia and skepticism when recounting shared histories and use a range of linguistic
features to ambiguously assert or downplay Serbia’s responsibility for past events. Teachers
alternate between criticizing and participating in bureaucratic interactional routines with their
students. Online, students mix politically-charged writing systems in novel ways that seem to
redefine modern Serbian youth identity while reasserting the advantages of living between ‘East’
and ‘West.’ Overall, this study reveals ambivalence to be a pervasive cultural and political mood
that can either lead to feelings of political and social paralysis or become a resource for new and
creative forms of identification.
iii
The dissertation of Rachel L. George is approved.
Adam Moore
Paul Kroskrity
Elinor Ochs
Alessandro Duranti, Committee Chair
University of California, Los Angeles
2014
iv
Table of Contents
LIST OF TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS..................................................................................... ix
Abbreviations Used in Interlinear Glosses ..................................................................................... x
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. xi
VITA ............................................................................................................................................ xiv
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Goals ..................................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Why Serbia? Why Belgrade? Why High School Students? ................................................ 3
1.3 Why Focus on Ambivalence? ............................................................................................... 6
1.4 The Potential of Ambivalence for Linguistic Anthropological Study .................................. 8
1.4.1 Language Socialization .................................................................................................. 8
1.4.2 Language and Agency .................................................................................................... 9
1.4.3 Multivocality ................................................................................................................ 12
1.4.4 Language Ideologies .................................................................................................... 12
1.4.5 Ambivalence as Stance ................................................................................................ 14
1.5 Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Ambivalence ............................................................ 15
1.6 Chapter Breakdown ........................................................................................................... 19
CHAPTER TWO: Fieldsite, Data Collection, and Analysis ........................................................ 24
2.1 Prior Research ..................................................................................................................... 24
2.2 Entering the Field ................................................................................................................ 25
2.2.1 The School ................................................................................................................... 26
2.3 Conducting Research ......................................................................................................... 28
2.3.1 Participant-Observation and Video- & Audiorecording ............................................. 28
2.3.2 Interviews ..................................................................................................................... 30
2.3.3 Facebook as a Research Tool ....................................................................................... 33
2.3.4 Print and Visual Documentation .................................................................................. 35
2.3.5 Other Documentation ................................................................................................... 36
2.4 Challenges .......................................................................................................................... 37
2.4.1 The Politics of Scrutiny ............................................................................................... 37
2.4.2 The role of English....................................................................................................... 38
2.5 Transcripts, Research Assistance, and Friendship .............................................................. 39
CHAPTER THREE: Major Themes in the History of Serbia ..................................................... 41
3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 43
3.2 A Basic Timeline ............................................................................................................... 44
3.3 Persistent Themes in Serbian History. ................................................................................ 47
3.3.1 Always In Between: Serbia’s Border Position............................................................. 47
3.3.2 “If It Were Good to Have a Brother, God Would Have One:” Ethnic Solidarity and
Tension since the Nineteenth Century .................................................................................. 50
3.3.2.1 The Language Situation: ....................................................................................... 53
3.3.3 Sacrifice, Disappointment and Stigma: The Roots of Serbian Double Consciousness:
............................................................................................................................................... 58
v
3.3.3.1 Serbs and Unacknowledged Sacrifice ................................................................... 59
3.3.3.2 Disappointment as a Pervasive Historical Theme ................................................ 61
3.3.4 Yugo-ambivalence ....................................................................................................... 63
3.4 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 67
CHAPTER FOUR: Treba Se Snaći (‘You Have To Manage’): The Language of Agency,
Futility, and Ambivalence ............................................................................................................. 68
4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 70
4.2 Language and Agency......................................................................................................... 72
4.3 Non-agency, Tactics, and Ambivalence ............................................................................ 75
4.3.1 Tactics – the power of small actions ............................................................................ 77
4.4 The Arrests of Accused Serbian War Criminals and Serbian Presidents’ Responses ....... 78
4.4.1 Agency and Non-agency in the Remarks ..................................................................... 80
4.4.1.1 Passive and Active Voice...................................................................................... 81
4.4.1.2 Choice and Coercion ............................................................................................. 83
4.5 Defiant Powerlessness in Everyday Talk ........................................................................... 84
4.6 Ambivalence and the Discourse of Futility ....................................................................... 88
4.6.1 Omitting or Obscuring the Agent ................................................................................ 89
4.6.2 Always or Never, Everyone or No one, All or Nothing ............................................. 93
4.6.3 Težak (Difficult or Heavy) .......................................................................................... 97
4.6.4 Conditionals ................................................................................................................. 99
4.7 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 108
CHAPTER FIVE: Reluctant Bureaucracy: Accounts, Narrative, and Negotiation in the
Classroom ................................................................................................................................... 110
5.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 110
5.2 The Democratic Transition ............................................................................................... 112
5.3 Bureaucracy and the Position of Teachers ........................................................................ 115
5.3.1 Bureaucracy ............................................................................................................... 115
5.3.2 Teachers’ Ambivalence ............................................................................................. 117
5.4 Accounts and Narratives in Everyday Classroom Negotiations ....................................... 119
5.4.1 Accountability ............................................................................................................ 120
5.4.2 Narrative .................................................................................................................... 121
5.5 Everyday Account sequences ........................................................................................... 121
5.5.1 ‘We wanted to ask on behalf of the whole class’....................................................... 122
5.5.2 'Professor. May I just ask you something?' ............................................................... 124
5.6 The Breach and Extended Narrative ................................................................................. 126
5.6.1 Breakdown of the Narrative ....................................................................................... 127
5.7 Multi-vocality in the Narrative ......................................................................................... 128
5.7.1 Institutional Voice ...................................................................................................... 130
5.7.1.1. Passive Voice ..................................................................................................... 131
5.7.1.2 Explicit rules ....................................................................................................... 131
5.7.1.3 Account elicitations and cross-examination ....................................................... 133
5.7.1.4 Rejection of the institutional voice ..................................................................... 135
5.7.2 Intimate Voice ............................................................................................................ 136
5.7.2.1 Use of “I,” emotion words, and emphatic markers ............................................. 137
5.7.2.2 Appeals for/Displays of perspective-taking ........................................................ 139
vi
5.7.2.3 Reciprocal Accounts ........................................................................................... 140
5.7.3.4 Emplotment ......................................................................................................... 142
5.8 Conclusions: ...................................................................................................................... 145
CHAPTER SIX: The Language of Political and Civic Participation in Belgrade and Los Angeles.
..................................................................................................................................................... 147
6.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 148
6.2 Political Socialization & Language Socialization ............................................................. 149
6.3 Political Engagement & Civic Engagement ..................................................................... 150
6.4 On (non-)engagement ....................................................................................................... 152
6.5 The Civics Course ............................................................................................................. 155
6.6 Citizen Engagement in Belgrade and Los Angeles – Questions of Agency, Inevitability,
and Morality ............................................................................................................................ 160
6.6.1 Belgrade – The ‘dvorište’ story ................................................................................. 161
6.6.2 Comparative data from Los Angeles ......................................................................... 164
6.6.2.1 Los Angeles – “I Remember Vietnam,” and the “Peace March of Convenience”
......................................................................................................................................... 165
6.6.2.2 “We Wind Up Being More Involved” – Passive Voice and the Patient Role .... 170
6.6.3 Why the difference? ............................................................................................... 173
6.7 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 175
CHAPTER SEVEN: Status Quo?: Serbian Youth Language and Identity on Facebook .......... 177
7.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 178
7.2 Sociolinguistic Variables and Indexes .............................................................................. 180
7.2.1 Symbolic Capital and the Linguistic Market ............................................................. 181
7.2.2 Indexicality ................................................................................................................ 181
7.3 Bivalency .......................................................................................................................... 183
7.4 Why Facebook? ................................................................................................................ 183
7.5 Historical Background ...................................................................................................... 185
7.5.1 The Cyrillic and Latin scripts .................................................................................... 186
7.5.2 Cyrillic and Latin today ............................................................................................. 189
7.6 The Collection of Facebook Data ..................................................................................... 193
7.7 Cyrillic, Latin, and English on Facebook ......................................................................... 193
7.7.1. Using Cyrillic for English or part-English phrases: ................................................. 194
7.7.2 Rendering Latin with English script .......................................................................... 197
7.8 Discussion: ........................................................................................................................ 198
7.9 Implications for Language, Identity, and Indexicality ...................................................... 201
7.10 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 207
CHAPTER EIGHT: Conclusions ............................................................................................... 209
Appendix A: Full Text of Remarks following the arrests of Ratko Mladić, Goran Hadžić, and
Radovan Karadžić ....................................................................................................................... 218
Appendix B: Narrative and Counternarrative (Analyzed in Chapter Five) ................................ 223
WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 238
vii
viii
