Department of Linguistics

Mirjana Dedaic received a BA in Yugoslav Languages and World Literatures from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and an MA in Philology from the same university. A Fulbright grant brought her to the US, where she was teaching the Croatian language and Sociolinguistics at the University of Virginia when the war erupted in the former Yugoslavia. She remained at UVA for her second MA in General Linguistics and, after seven years as a radio journalist and editor with Voice of America’s Croatian Service, finished her PhD in Sociolinguistics at Georgetown University.
Mirjana Dedaic currently teaches Intercultural Communication, Constructing National Identity through Communication, Netspeak: Language, Discourse, and Identity on the Internet, Language and Politics, and Ethnography of Communication. She also mentors projects in connection with the Georgetown University Women Leadership Initiative (GUWLI).
Her research interests include linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis of gendered and political discourses, national identity, and social construction of the stepmother. Among her published works are an edited volume, At War With Words, and articles that take pragmatic and discourse-analytical approach to political texts and family discourse. She is currently working on several books about South-Slavic discourse particles, immigration discourses, and a view of national identity construction through Bourdieu’s habitus.
In addition to Georgetown, Mirjana Dedaic has taught at the University of Split, Fairfield University, Southern Connecticut State University, and American University. Her creative writing includes poetry published in both Croatian and English.