Professor Robert Greenberg from the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics at the University of Auckland talks about his big question, “Why are language issues so politicised and so emotionally charged in various parts of the world?”
Greenberg’s current research projects focus on the language policies in the Yugoslav successor states, especially Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. He is also interested in how language issues are used to inflame ethnic and political tensions. In this regard, he has recently been comparing and contrasting the situation in contemporary Ukraine with that in the former Yugoslavia in the period leading up to including the wars of the 1990s.
Robert Greenberg is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Auckland. He is an expert in sociolinguistics.
This is part two of the Big Q’s “Big Question” video series. For more, click here.
For more of our audio and visual content, check out our YouTube channel, or head to the University of Auckland’s manuscripts and archives collection.
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this video reflect the views of the lecturer and not necessarily the views of The Big Q.
You might also like:
