Dr. Elizabeth Spreng
Assistant Professor 208 Waters Hall Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Kansas State University |  |
From a personal perspective, Elizabeth Anne Spreng describes herself as an American-born European who has lived in ten states in the US and two and three-quarter countries. The “half” country is Lusatia (Łužica), the territorial homeland of the Sorbs and the place where she conducted her doctoral fieldwork and Scotland is the “quarter” country, the site of her wedding. She might even go so far to say that she is a transnational, because she is married to a German whose father was a “native” Sorbian speaker and her mother is Scottish ex-patriot. In many ways, Dr. Spreng understands the challenges and victories of a living as a multilingual person in a globalized world. She has spoken and/or studied nine languages: British English, Czech, English (the Americanized variety), French, German, Mittelalter Deutsch, Russian, Spanish, and Upper Sorb. She also looks forward to intensifying her own confusion of tongues.
Elizabeth Spreng’s intellectual history is a long and complicated one that involves following her dream to become an anthropologist. An interest in languages began with study of German in high school and deepened during her studies of Renaissance and Reformation Studies at Duke University (BA 1986), but she only discovered her fascination with anthropology in her senior year. Her love of anthropology grew during her studies at Louisiana State University (MA 2001), where she researched the intersections among gendered discourses, language, and US politics. In this work, Dr. Spreng performed a discourse analysis of the Monica Lewinsky and Barbara Walter’s 1999 interview. Dr. Spreng also conducted fieldwork in Baton Rouge during her master’s program and researched Mardi Gras narratives through the lens of material culture, gender, politics, and place. After some time, she began a linguistic anthropology doctoral program of study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received her doctorate in 2011. Elizabeth Spreng decided that she wanted to work with Sorbian speakers with a plan to investigate the dynamics of linguistic survival.
In being a linguistic anthropologist with a four-fields background, she currently investigates issues related to bilingualism, language endangerment, globalization, and emotions. During her doctoral fieldwork in Germany, Dr. Spreng worked closely with speakers of Upper Sorb, an endangered Slavic language. At first she became increasingly aware of their “unhappiness.” In response to their dilemmas, Dr. Spreng realized that she would be researching “happiness” and other emotional stances and exploring how affect relates to language use.
Elizabeth Spreng’s analysis of their linguistic practices draws heavily on the stories that bilingual Sorbs told her as they translated Munro Leaf’s classic children’s tale The Story of Ferdinand. Her primary focus entailed access to their linguistic choices and understanding mish-mash, what Sorbian speakers identify as usage of Sorbian and German resources drawing on standardized and non-standardized linguistic resources. During the process of coming to a point of satisfaction with translating the story of a Spanish bull that would rather smell the flowers than fight in the arena, Dr. Spreng uncovered complex negotiations of linguistic resources or mixing registers. Their translations revealed the affective and linguistic dynamics involved with creating a written mirror of mish-mash. Thus, Dr. Spreng’s ethnography cum translation provides a detailed analysis of the complexities of bilingual life and choices. Her future research will include work with Upper Sorbian speakers and she hopes to conduct another ethnography cum translation in another endangered language context.
Elizabeth Spreng’s intellectual history is a long and complicated one that involves following her dream to become an anthropologist. An interest in languages began with study of German in high school and deepened during her studies of Renaissance and Reformation Studies at Duke University (BA 1986), but she only discovered her fascination with anthropology in her senior year. Her love of anthropology grew during her studies at Louisiana State University (MA 2001), where she researched the intersections among gendered discourses, language, and US politics. In this work, Dr. Spreng performed a discourse analysis of the Monica Lewinsky and Barbara Walter’s 1999 interview. Dr. Spreng also conducted fieldwork in Baton Rouge during her master’s program and researched Mardi Gras narratives through the lens of material culture, gender, politics, and place. After some time, she began a linguistic anthropology doctoral program of study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received her doctorate in 2011. Elizabeth Spreng decided that she wanted to work with Sorbian speakers with a plan to investigate the dynamics of linguistic survival.
In being a linguistic anthropologist with a four-fields background, she currently investigates issues related to bilingualism, language endangerment, globalization, and emotions. During her doctoral fieldwork in Germany, Dr. Spreng worked closely with speakers of Upper Sorb, an endangered Slavic language. At first she became increasingly aware of their “unhappiness.” In response to their dilemmas, Dr. Spreng realized that she would be researching “happiness” and other emotional stances and exploring how affect relates to language use.
Elizabeth Spreng’s analysis of their linguistic practices draws heavily on the stories that bilingual Sorbs told her as they translated Munro Leaf’s classic children’s tale The Story of Ferdinand. Her primary focus entailed access to their linguistic choices and understanding mish-mash, what Sorbian speakers identify as usage of Sorbian and German resources drawing on standardized and non-standardized linguistic resources. During the process of coming to a point of satisfaction with translating the story of a Spanish bull that would rather smell the flowers than fight in the arena, Dr. Spreng uncovered complex negotiations of linguistic resources or mixing registers. Their translations revealed the affective and linguistic dynamics involved with creating a written mirror of mish-mash. Thus, Dr. Spreng’s ethnography cum translation provides a detailed analysis of the complexities of bilingual life and choices. Her future research will include work with Upper Sorbian speakers and she hopes to conduct another ethnography cum translation in another endangered language context.
