Dr. Svenja Völkel

What is my research about?

My research interests lie in the areas of language typology, anthropological linguistics/linguistic anthropology and cognitive linguistics. The regional focus of my research is on Oceania, particularly Polynesia, where I have been studying topics such as forms of politeness/honorifics, kinship terminology, spatial deixis, possessive constructions, theory of mind, word classes, and personal names. Since 2001, I have spent more than 24 months in the Pacific region – apart from shorter stays in Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, and the Cook Islands, most of that time was spent conducting field research in Tonga and New Zealand.

What is my approach to human differentiation?

Guided by the question of the interplay between language, culture and cognition, I am particularly interested in studying linguistic forms and practices of personal reference in the context of culture-specific human categories and social concepts. What language-specific distinctions (e.g. based on gender or status) have developed in linguistic structures (from lexicon/onomasticon to grammar) and in language use? What cultural ideas of social order are expressed linguistically? And how are diverging categories and concepts negotiated in language contact?

What is my contribution to the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC)?

Within the CRC, I lead project F03 “Linguistic status differentiation in Polynesian societies” and research area F “Distinction zones”. So far, only single aspects of linguistic status differentiation in Polynesian languages have been investigated (primarily honorifics in individual Western Polynesian languages). The research project aims to provide more comprehensive insights into the referential and indexical forms used in Polynesian languages to process stratificatory distinctions, extending into the distinction zones of humaness (especially the transcendent and the animalistic) and where linguistic forms of distancing (verbal taboos) have been emerged or disappeared.

What is my scientific background?

I studied linguistics (general and comparative linguistics), cultural anthropology (regional focus: Africa) and media communication in Mainz. There, I also completed my doctorate in linguistics in 2007 with an anthropological-linguistic thesis on social structure, space and possession in Tongan. Due to my regional focus, I was closely connected with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology in Heidelberg, where I also taught and conducted research within the project “Person, space and memory in the contemporary Pacific”. Since 2006, I have been a research assistant at the Institute for Language Typology at JGU Mainz.

Photo: Sina Völkel