Institute for cultural studies

Cultural Studies

In the Cultural Studies research group, we understand culture in a very broad way. As such, culture does not include only art, written texts and stories, but also oral discourses, material culture, ways of communication, rituals and other forms. For us, culture is a very broad spectrum of human activities. We are interested in naming processes more than facts, in the rhetoric about the status of certain social groups (defined by their language, ethnicity, gender, etc.) more than in the rhetoric of these groups themselves. Cultural Studies may therefore be defined as a plethora of contemporary research approaches which we employ in exploring the basic changes in behavioral patterns, beliefs, attitudes towards work, sexuality, nature, corporeality ...

We analyze manifestations of culture as various, mutually-related discourses which are aware of each other and are in a relationship of continuous dialogue. The experience gained through our research of cultural phenomena have tought us that culture is not a monolithic and coherent concept in space and time; in the same sense, the identities of an individual or social group are not stable and void of inner contradictions. Historical experience, on the other hand, warns us that culture is never politically innocent. Because of that, we are aware of a need to dismantle influences and ways of communication between domains such as politics and everyday life, institutions and individuals, memory and ideology, the present and the past. We are mainly interested in the ways in which language, memory and historical legacy are being mobilized in the processes that construe a spectrum of social identities – how they contribute to national, regional, gender and class identity formation.

The researchers of the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Nova Gorica are historians, linguists, philosophers and anthropologists, but in their research they also use methodologies from other social sciences. Our research is mostly focused on Slovenia, but we are also interested in the broader area of Central and Southeastern Europe in which we are located. Obviously, this area has had and still has a lot of influence on Slovenia, so the various cultural processes there could not be properly understood if we were to ignore this broader area.

Basic Research

• Changing memory landscape in Southeastern and Central Europe (prof. dr. Oto Luthar)
• Remembering the Yugoslav People’s Army (doc. dr. Tanja Petrović)

• History of historiography (prof. dr. Oto Luthar)
• History of linguistics (doc. dr. Matejka Grgič)
• Trends and developments in the research of the language-culture interface at the end of 20^th and the beginning of the 21^st century (doc. dr. Tanja Petrović)

• Semiotics and theory of symbols (doc. dr. Matejka Grgič)
• Language ideologies and social processes in Central and Southeastern Europe (doc. dr. Tanja Petrović)
• Construing an Image of Neighborhood: Austria, Slovenia and Discourses on Southeastern Europe (doc. dr. Tanja Petrović)

Language and Cognitive sciences

Cognitive science studies human cognition or more generally the way human brains work. Besides the more obvious sciences of this area like neurology and cognitive psychology, (formal) linguistics is also a cognitive science, following the work initiated by Noam Chomsky in the middle of the 20th century. Cognitive sciences are gaining popularity and importance especially because of their part in building human computer interfaces, artificial inteligence and other computer assisted language related machinery. Of course, one should not overlook the more basic questions regarding the way people think.

Language and Cognitive Sciences conducts research primarily within formal linguistics. We conduct research also within other cognitive sciences, primarily those related to language like neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

CLCS co-operates with many researches from all over the world. (Harvard University, Stony Brook University, University of Ottawa, University of Reading, Universität Konstanz, etc.).

Main areas of research

• Syntax of clausal complements
• Conjunct agreement
• Ellipsis and other unpronounced elements in syntax

• Structure of the nominal and adjectival phrases
• Syntax of clausal complements
• Ellipsis and other unpronounced elements in syntax
• Comparative syntax of slavic verbal prefixes
• (De)voicing across Slovenian dialects
• Phonology as a theoretical testing ground

• Autism and language (diagnosing autism with language, discovering linguistic and cognitive phenomena based on autism related language deficits)
• Language and aging (detection of linguistic clues for aging and their role within broader cognitive processes)

• Internet language consultancy ŠUSS
• Slovenian company names
• Language policy in general