Sociolinguistics and language policy
In its narrower application, sociolinguistics connects language variation with the social characteristics of language users such as gender, age, education, geographic and ethnic background, and other social group features. Research in our Institute investigates language variation, language environments, multilingual communication and various language varieties, such as teenagers’ language, learners’ language and Estonian spoken in the diaspora.
Language policy is defined primarily as choices (including those of the state), which, along with managing linguistic diversity, affect social change, including the presence or lack of social cohesion and unequal distribution of resources. TÜHIK Hence, research on language policy and planning is interdisciplinary, involving both linguistics and social sciences. In the Institute, we investigate questions around language choices and attitudes in the context of the internationalisation of higher education, the transition to a fully Estonian-medium public school system and the norming of dialects, as well as questions of language ideology and ecology.
Researchers related to the field
Kadri Koreinik
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Associate Professor of Sociology of Language
Jakobi 2-435
Kadri Koreinik is Associate Professor in Language Sociology. Her research interests include language political and other challenges multilingual societies face, and extralinguistic factors, which influence language use. She has published a lot on the sociolinguistic status of Võro, the second most spoken and cultivated Estonian variety. In 2023-2026, she is working on the ETAG-funded research project "The Promise of Proximity to Quality: Spatial Strategies to Address Geographic Distances and Linguistic Differences in Secondary Schools" (PRG1719).
Kadri Koreinik
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Associate Professor of Sociology of Language
Jakobi 2-435
Kristiina Praakli
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics
Jakobi 2-435
Kristiina Praakli is an Associate Professor of Applied linguistics.
Kristiina Praakli
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics
Jakobi 2-435
Külli Habicht
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Associate Professor of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-444
Külli Habicht is an associate professor of Estonian language. Her main fields of research are morphosyntax, inflectional and derivational morphology and Old Literary Estonian. She has also studied pragmatics and historical sociolinguistics. Her research is based on functional, usage-based theory. Külli has researched grammaticalization of adpositions and modal constructions, pragmaticalization of discourse particles and diachronic development of the vocabulary in written Estonian. Her current projects include the compiling of a digital dictionary of Old Literary Estonian and investigating pragmatic particles in different registers. She takes part of the research done by The Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies through the project group PRG341 led by Helle Metslang. She is the co-author of the monography Estonian Inflectional Morphology, four dictionaries of Old Literary Estonian and a gymnasium textbook Language and Society. Külli has been a part of the national Estonian language exam work group and taken part of organising a number of Estonian language Olympiads.
Külli Habicht
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Associate Professor of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-444
Karl Pajusalu
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Academician, Professor of History and Dialects of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-425
+372 526 7733 (6124)
Karl Pajusalu is a Professor of Estonian language history and dialects, a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. He studies the pronunciation and grammar of Estonian and its related languages as well as their changes, and has also dealt with historical sociolinguistics. His research has focused most of all on Southern Finnic languages, especially their word prosody. He is one of the founders of the University of Tartu Collegium for Transdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. He is currently involved in compiling the Typological Database of Uralic Languages and taking part in the Estonian ethnic history project and research projects on Inari Sámi prosody and Livonian heritage; he is also participating in the compilation of Seto, Mulgi, and Häädemeeste dictionaries.
Karl Pajusalu
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Academician, Professor of History and Dialects of Estonian Language
Jakobi 2-425
+372 526 7733 (6124)
Helle Metslang
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Professors emeriti, Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Professor emeritus
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Professor emeritus 0.75 p
Jakobi 2-424
Helle Metslang is Professor Emerita at the University of Tartu, Adjunct Professor of the University of Helsinki and of the University of Oulu, Member of Academia Europaea, of the AcademiaNet, of the Estonian Language Board.She has worked as Professor at the universities of Tartu, Tallinn and Helsinki. Her research interests include morphosyntax, pragmatics, language dynamics, language variation, historical sociolinguistics, contrastive linguistics and typology. She is co-author of Estonian reference grammars and Editor in Chief of the book series "Eesti keele varamu" (Estonian repository), PI of the project “Pragmatics overwrites grammar: subjectivity and intersubjectivity in different registers and genres of Estonian“ (PRG341).
Helle Metslang
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Professors emeriti, Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Professor emeritus
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Professor emeritus 0.75 p
Jakobi 2-424
Helen Plado
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Lecturer in Estonian Language 0.2 p
Jakobi 2-426
Helen Plado is a research fellow and a lecturer of Estonian. Her main research interests are language variation and change. The main focus of her research is on syntax (mainly complex sentences), but in ddition to this, she has studied other morphosyntactic issues. Her research focuses on Estonian and Võro, latter of which she has studied on sociolinguistic perspective as well. Helen Plado uses mainly corpus data, but also the data collected during field work and linguistic experiments. She is the editor of the Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics.
Helen Plado
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Estonian
Lecturer in Estonian Language 0.2 p
Jakobi 2-426
Kerttu Rozenvalde
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Research Fellow in Language Policy
Jakobi 2-437
Kerttu Rozenvalde is currently Research Fellow in Language Policy. Her academic interests include language issues in society, which she has mainly approached through analysing language policies in higher education. She defended her PhD thesis on language policy in higher education in Estonia and Latvia at the University of Latvia in 2019. She is currently conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of Tartu on language use and ideologies in a multilingual university in order to understand the relationship between the sustainability of Estonian as language of higher education, and multilingual language use in university. She has previously worked as the lecturer of the Estonian language and culture at the University of Latvia, and participated in the large-scale sociolinguistic studies on the language Situation in Latvia (2010–2015, and 2016–2020) that were financed by the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science, and carried out by the Latvian Language Agency.
Kerttu Rozenvalde
Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics
Department of Applied Linguistics
Research Fellow in Language Policy
Jakobi 2-437
Peeter Tinits
Digital Humanities Specialist 0.25 p
Peeter Tinits is a digital humanities specialist in the Center for Digital Humanities and Information Society. He teaches introductory courses in digital humanities and text analytics in the University of Tartu. As a researcher he has dealt with describing the late 19th century Estonian language communities from the perspective of historical sociolinguistics, and applying the framework of cultural evolution in linguistics and in humanities more broadly, combining data analytics and various databases. At the moment he is, in collaboration with the social scientists ta the University of Tartu in the Deep Transitions research group, working on applying text mining tools to understand shifts in thinking about the natural environment and technology in industrialized nations during the 20th century.
Anna Branets
doctoral student
Anna Branets is a PhD student at the University of Tartu. Her PhD is conducted within a double degree with Groningen University (The Netherlands). Research interests comprise such topics as sociolinguistics, multilingualism and namely receptive multilingualism, comprehension between languages, L3 language acquisition. She focuses on Ukrainian, Russian and Estonian cases.
Mari-Liis Korkus
doctoral student
Mari-Liis Korkus is a PhD student at the Department of Applied Linguistics who is mainly interested in topics such as multilingualism and identity. Her current research revolves around the oral language use of Swedish Estonians, with a particular emphasis on the daily communication of teenage speakers. Additionally, she is involved with the „Teen Speak in Estonia“ project.
Maria Iqbal
doctoral student
Maria Iqbal is a PhD Student in General Linguistics. Her research focuses on the study of the Family Language Policy of the Estonian Tatar families.
Elisabeth Kaukonen
doctoral student
Elisabeth Kaukonen is a doctoral student, whose field of interest and topic of research is gender-marked vocabulary in Estonian language, its usage and the stands of language users towards gendered vocabulary and feminisation of the language.