Dr. Laura Jagelkova

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English, American and Celtic Studies, University of Bonn. I am also a recurrent visiting scholar at the Department of Linguistics at Dartmouth College.

I obtained my PhD from Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. During my doctoral studies, I received a Fulbright Schuman Scholarship to conduct research at Dartmouth College, USA; a DAAD Scholarship to conduct research at the University of Cologne, Germany; and a France Excellence Scholarship to conduct research at the Centre de Linguistique en Sorbonne and at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. In addition, I was affiliated with the Slovak Academy of Sciences. 

My current research examines the mutual intelligibility of Slavic languages of the EU among native English speakers and heritage speakers of Slavic languages in the United States of America. Comparing mutual intelligibility patterns across native English speakers and heritage speakers will allow to me separate the influence of linguistic determinants and extra-linguistics determinants. To achieve this, I developed an innovative questionnaire including not only listening and reading tasks to measure the level of mutual intelligibility, but also a cognitive game and questions to measure personality traits and sociolinguistic characteristics. The survey design will allow me to identify the impact of language itself, of exposure, and of personal attributes and effort on an individual’s understanding of related, but different, languages.

Documenting patterns of mutual intelligibility among EU Slavic languages will help clarify how speakers of one Slavic language can leverage their ability to communicate more effectively at basic or intermediate levels with speakers of other Slavic languages. I aim to generate knowledge to create the basis for a pedagogical approach emphasizing the determinants that facilitate mutual intelligibility, including cognitive skills and personal attributes. I thus hope to lay the groundwork for making the system of language education more effective and to facilitate communication between speakers of different Slavic languages, which will encourage the protection of language diversity. 

In future projects, I plan to apply the methodology developed for this research to understanding mutual intelligibility patterns of other native speakers (e.g., German), related languages (e.g., Ukrainian), and language families (e.g., Scandinavian).