Visnja Cicin-Sain

My primary academic interests are metaphor and figuration in both their linguistic-discursive and conceptual-cognitive aspects. How do we conceptualize complex and multi-aspectual linguistic phenomena such as language contact, change and classification? What figurations do we commonly use in expressing evaluative stance to specific language phenomena (e.g. borrowings)?

Area specifically, I analyze discourses and language debates in the area of the former Yugoslavia. ​I examine the ways in which metaphors and figurations are deployed in discursive projects of creating and sustaining ideologies related to the successor languages established after the disintegration of Serbo-Croatian – Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, with a specific focus on the discursive employment of figurations in the delineation of language borders.

Academic interests

• Cognitive Linguistics
• Metaphor analysis
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory
• Discourse analysis
• Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian