Head of Laboratory
Prof. Đuro Blažeka, PhD – Department of Croatian Language and Literature, Stage and Media Culture, Google Scholar
Collaborators at the Faculty of Teacher Education
Prof. Krunoslav Mikulan, PhD – Full Professor, Department of English Language Teacher Education, Google Scholar
Assoc. Prof. Vladimir Legac, PhD – Associate Professor, Department of German Language Teacher Education – Intercultural German Studies, Google Scholar
Dr. Darinka Kiš Novak – Senior Lecturer, Google Scholar
Jura Ozmec – Teaching Assistant, Department of German Language Teacher Education – Intercultural German Studies, Google Scholar
External Collaborators
Prof. Helena Dragić, PhD – Full Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Google Scholar
Prof. Dunja Brozović Rončević, PhD – Full Professor (tenured), University of Zadar, Google Scholar
Mihaela Blažeka Draganić, M.Ed. in Croatian Language and Literature and M.Ed. in Pedagogy, CROSBI/CRORIS
Reasons for Establishing the Laboratory Project
The Međimurje region and its neighboring areas represent one of the most extensively lexicographically documented Croatian linguistic areas. Over the past decades, extensive dialectological material has been collected, and scholarly dictionaries of the Međimurje dialect and neighboring speech varieties have been published, containing a large number of illustrative sentences drawn from authentic speech.
This material is not only a valuable linguistic resource but also a unique record of the everyday life of local communities — the dictionary entries and their sentence examples preserve information about traditional culture, folk beliefs, customs, family relationships, identity, work, food, and other aspects of life among the population of northwestern Croatia.
Dialectological research to date has been predominantly focused on the linguistic features of the lexicon, while the potential of dialect dictionaries as a source for studying cultural, social, and historical heritage has not been systematically explored. The distinctive feature of this laboratory, therefore, is not the study of dialect as a linguistic system per se, but rather the use of dialect dictionaries and their material as sources for studying the life and heritage of the regions they describe — thereby opening the field toward ethnology, sociology, history, cultural anthropology, and educational sciences.
The purpose of establishing the laboratory is to create a research infrastructure for developing new scientific research and preparing competitive project applications for the Croatian Science Foundation and other national and international funding sources.
Project Goals
1. Language as a source of knowledge about the community
1.1. Analyze dialect dictionaries and existing field material as sources of data on the everyday life of local communities
1.2. Determine how social relationships, values, and behavioral patterns are reflected in the lexicon and sentence examples
1.3. Investigate the connection between language, identity, and regional belonging
2. Research into cultural and social heritage
2.1. Identify and analyze data on traditional customs, beliefs, and folk culture
2.2. Analyze data on work, economy, food, housing, and everyday life
2.3. Examine representations of family relationships, child-rearing, intergenerational relations, and social roles
2.4. Examine humor, stereotypes, pejoratives, vulgarisms, and other linguistic indicators of local community mentality
3. Historical and contact-linguistic research
3.1. Investigate traces of historical social and cultural processes preserved in the lexicon
3.2. Analyze Germanisms as a reflection of centuries-long cultural and linguistic contact
3.3. Investigate Slovenian and other contact influences on the Međimurje dialect and neighboring speech varieties
4. Digitalization and development of research infrastructure
4.1. Create a digital database of sentence examples from existing dialect dictionaries
4.2. Develop a model for the digital processing of dialectological material
4.3. Lay the foundations for a future digital corpus of the Međimurje dialect and neighboring speech varieties
5. Education and teaching
5.1. Involve students of teacher education and early childhood education programs in the laboratory’s research activities
5.2. Develop teaching materials based on local linguistic and cultural heritage
5.3. Popularize research results among pupils, students, and the local community
