Contact Eva Eckert
Education
B.A., Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia;
M.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
"No matter what language you study, you will encounter questions such as… how do language rules originate? Why is knowing words not enough to speak a language? Is the order of words in a sentence related to how action unfolds? Who makes up idioms? Can you be sarcastic in any language? Why can we speak about one thing in so many different ways? Why don’t dogs bark the same in any language? Such questions point to language as a fundamental characteristic of humans, an engine that sets our lives in motion, an exclusively human tool to communicate by operating a set of brain rules and the elemental requirement for functioning in any sort of a group."
In teaching linguistics and Slavic languages I strive to relate our capacity for language to daily activities, social behaviors and mental processes. Doing linguistics means tackling structural complexity of language, i.e., accounting for complex rules involved in patterning of sounds, words and meaning. For the uninitiated this complexity may be perplexing and unexpected; after all, even small children can handle language, and we all use it no matter how smart and old we are. The task of a linguist is to clarify this hidden complexity and explain it in relation to neurological functioning of the human brain. As Ray Jackendoff writes in Foundations of Language, “The study of linguistic structure can provide an entrée into the complexities of mind and brain. Not the only one by any means, but one with unique insights to offer” (xii). - Eva Eckert
SATA
Prague 1999, 2002
SATA
Prague 2004
Eva Eckert
Professor of Slavic Studies and Linguistics
On sabbatical fall 2009
Joined Connecticut College: 1990
Specialization:
- Linguistics
- Russian
- Czech
At Connecticut College, Professor Eva Eckert, a Czech native, teaches Russian and an array of linguistics courses, and coordinates the linguistics minor and the self-designed linguistics major.
Eckert has researched immigrant languages and communities, acculturation, and most recently immigrant press, and written on topics such as languages in contact, language maintenance and death, immigration history, and standard and vernacular language variants. Her scholarly work is interdisciplinary, oscillating between linguistics and history, and drawing on primary sources collected while photographing gravestones at Czech cemeteries in Texas, interviewing descendants of pioneer immigrants, reading immigrant press and digging in emigration archives in Prague.
While in Prague, Professor Eckert was invited by Charles University to speak about her experience with advising and counseling at a liberal arts college in which she emphasized also the importance of tutoring and mentoring, only now being introduced in Czech schools as integral to university education.
She also gave an invited lecture at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague on "Language in Migration: Speakers' Attitudes."
Eckert has published Stones on the Prairie: Acculturation in America (Slavica Publishers 2007; the Czech edition of the book appeared in 2005). The books analyze acculturation and reconstruct the identity of a homogeneous group of 19th-century Czech and Moravian farmers in Texas along with that of the author, who underwent an immigrant journey from Czechoslovakia to Texas a century later. Her research in acculturation and immigration involved many trips to Texas and the Czech Republic.
Eckert has delivered papers at conferences of the American Cultural Association and the Czech Academy of Sciences as well as meetings of Slavic professional organizations.
Her recent articles appeared in Journal of Slavic Linguistics; the Czech historical journal History and the Present; ethnographic journals and gravestone research journals; Journal of Modern Philology and various collections of Slavic linguistic articles. Her interest in language structure and variation led her to publish Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics (1993).
Eckert led SATA Prague 2007 in the Fall, a semester abroad that focused on Czech and Central European Studies (Read the students’ and her own comments on the SATA Prague 2005 Blog).
In 1995, Eckert received a U.S.D.E. Fulbright-Hays National Endowment for the Humanities research/curriculum development grant that enabled fourteen colleagues to journey through the Czech Republic and Slovakia while seeking to comprehend European transition from the Czech perspective.
She is a member of the Linguistic Society of America.
View the complete Slavic Studies Web site, and the Linguistics Web site.