Cristiana Lucchetti, Dr.
- PostDoc Sprachwissenschaft
- PostDoc project: Language Practices of the post-Yugoslav diaspora in Switzerland
- Tel.
- 044 634 54 38
- Raumbezeichnung
- PLG C 205
Navigation auf uzh.ch
Navigation auf uzh.ch
I am a linguist with expertise in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and the sociology of language. I completed my PhD in Slavic Philology at LMU Munich.
With my research, I take on a society-oriented, interdisciplinary perspective on Slavic and other languages.
The question at the center of my research is: what does language – e.g. language behavior, language contact, language policy, language ideology – tell us about society – in terms of the societal organization of human knowledge, power and resources? To tackle this far-reaching question, I employ a variety of methods, including quantitative sociological surveys, corpus analysis, ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews.
Up to the conclusion of my PhD, I have been working on sociolinguistic questions regarding Russian, Hebrew, Tatar, German and Ukrainian, amongst others.
PostDoc project
My main research project (German “Habilitationsprojekt”) is titled “Language maintenance, prestige ideologies and spatial situatedness in transnational communities. A comparative study on the post-Yugoslav diaspora in Switzerland and the US”. Results from this project are going to be published in different papers and as a monograph titled “Language, ideologies and space in transnational communities”.
This project has received funding from the Institute of Slavic and East European Studies at the University of Zurich, GRC UZH and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
This project focuses on the language practices of heritage speakers of BCMS (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) and (mainly Kosovo) Albanian in different generations.
Migration from the Balkan peninsula, especially from the successor states of Yugoslavia, has been having a high relevance in and outside of Europe. The US and Switzerland, with their radically different geographies and demographic structures, are important recipient countries of immigration from the former Yugoslavia. However, research engaging with these topics is comparatively scant. This is especially the case in linguistics, where a comprehensive project focusing on the post-Yugoslav diaspora is still missing. With this project, I intend to contribute my share to filling this research void.
Societal relevance
Both in the US and Switzerland, immigrants report dissatisfaction with measures available for culture and language maintenance, as well as experiences of discrimination in several contexts. Especially in Switzerland, speakers of BCMS and Albanian are often pigeonholed with the label "Jugo" regardless of their origin, not to mention self-perception.
Next to an added value for the scientific community, this project aims to sensitize societal actors, such as educational institutions, businesses and the media, regarding discriminatory ideologies based on language and origin. Through public presentations, outreach events, public interviews and media presence, this project continuously engages in dissemination.
Research questions
This project departs from the specific case of the post-Yugoslav diaspora to tackle the following dimensions & research questions of general relevance in interdisciplinary linguistics:
Methods
To tackle these questions, I employ a triangulation of questionnaire data, sociolinguistic interviews and cognitive map tasks. I have conducted several interviews and surveys in the US and Switzerland and successfully tested cognitive maps. Between April and October 2025, I am engaging in an intensive fieldwork phase together with student assistant Jolina Saliquni.
Publications
This project commits to an open science approach. I plan to make all publications as available as possible, prioritizing open access publications. Next to publishing results in papers and a monograph, I am gradually making all data collected available to the public. I have already published the German-speaking questionnaire I developed for this study. You can download it here and use it as a template for your own research. Import it directly into LimeSurvey or use the pdf version if you conduct surveys on another platform.
Refer to my list of publications for an actualized overview of past & ongoing publications.
You can also stay up-to-date on my research activities by checking my personal website.
Since 3/2023: Research Assistantship, Slavic Department University of Zurich
5/2023: PhD thesis defense
1/2023: Submission of PhD thesis Language Attitudes and Social Identity. A Study on Russian-Speaking Immigrant Communities in Israel and Germany
6-7/2022 Study trip to Kyrgyzstan, organized and financed by Hanns Seidel Foundation
9-12/2021 Visiting research stay at UC Berkeley, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
10/2019-2/2020 Research exchange, Tel Aviv University
4/2019-5/2023 PhD in LMU Munich’s Graduate School Language and Literature – Class of Language. PhD scholarship provided by Hanns Seidel Foundation, Germany
12/2018 – 3/2019 Fieldwork in Germany
11/2018 Pilot study and fieldwork in Israel
9/2017 MA thesis fieldwork in Tatarstan
10/2016-9/2018 MA “Cultural and Cognitive Linguistics”, LMU Munich
2-6/2016 Overseas scholarship exchange at Moscow State University, Historical Faculty and Philological Faculty
9/2014-2/2015 Erasmus scholarship exchange at LMU Munich, Institute for German as a Foreign Language
9/2013-10/2016 BA “European Languages and Cultures”, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Monographs
Edited volumes
Book chapters
Articles in journals
Book reviews
Open access datasets and data
Science to public