Miho Zlazli
Key information
- Qualifications
- MA (SOAS)
- Email address
- 601339@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- A case study of Master-Apprentice initiative with new speakers of Ryukyuan languages (Working Title)
- Internal Supervisors
- Dr Fabio Gygi, Professor Julia Sallabank & Dr Barbara Pizziconi
Biography
I am an indigenous Ryukyuan researcher, born and raised in a minority Christian population in a village lying in the politically dominant region across the Ryukyus - Okinawa. I had an assimilated Japanese identity and a monolithic view on diverse Ryukyuan communities until I started visiting other Ryukyuan regions for my PhD research.
Several relocations to a larger city in Okinawa, Kyushu region in mainland Japan, Istanbul in Turkey, and London in England, searching for better opportunities for education and freedom; having Ryukyuan relatives in Tokyo and Osaka as well as in-law Turkish-Syrian and Arab-Kabyle families including political refugees; and my emerging Ryukyuan identity through my PhD research have made me interested in pluralistic identity of people who cross visible and invisible boundaries in the public eye.
I currently conduct collaborative autoethnography and participatory action research with new speakers of Ryukyuan languages to explore challenges of language acquisition in the context of non-standardized endangered languages as well as new speakers’ identities and what it means to be a citizen in sustainable Ryukyuan communities.
Research interests
- discourse analysis
- interdisciplinary collaboration
- language acquisition/learning/teaching
- language contact
- linguistic anthropology
- new speakers