Friend or Comrade? The Indexical Transition of Address Terms in Post-Soviet Armenian Education

About the Event: 

During the event, we will discuss Dr. Lilit Ghazaryan’s paper, which explores the enduring presence and layered meanings of the Armenian address term ընկեր (uhnker) — translated here as comrade — in kindergarten classrooms and broader educational settings in post-Soviet Armenia. 

Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, including 35 person-centered interviews (Hollan & Wellenkamp, 2019; Levy & Hollan, 1998), participant observation, and classroom recordings from 2019–23, Dr. Ghazaryan examines how “uhnker” circulates as a linguistic form that indexes authority, institutional distance, and affective hierarchy. Though rooted in Soviet-era discourse, “uhnker” no longer signals solidarity or egalitarianism (Dean, 2018). Instead, it has come to embody a pedagogical logic of respect, discipline, and asymmetrical roles. Drawing on Goffman’s (1981) work on footing and participant roles and Schegloff et al.’s (1977) theories of repair and self-correction, Dr. Ghazaryan analyzes how teachers and children use address to establish and negotiate social positioning, arguing that rather than functioning as either “friend” or “comrade,” “uhnker” has emerged as a marker of authority, power, and respect.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Lilit Ghazaryan is a linguistic anthropologist specializing in language socialization, peer socialization, language ideologies, language policies, and practices in preschool educational institutions in post-Soviet Armenia. She received her doctorate at UCLA, defending her dissertation titled “Comrades, Conflicts, and Classrooms: Language Policy and Practice in post-Soviet Armenian Education.” Currently, Dr. Ghazaryan is an adjunct lecturer at AUA and a researcher at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia.

Language:

English