Mapping Language and Identity: Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian and the Armenian Diaspora Survey

 ""Language Therapy with Dr. K"
University of Southern California, Armenian Studies Institute, 7 May 2025

What does it mean to live a multilingual life shaped by displacement, theology, and research? How can language serve both as a utilitarian tool and a site of philosophical reflection? And what can large-scale data reveal about Armenian identity across continents? Join Dr. K and Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian—sociologist, scholar of religion, and director of the Armenian Diaspora Survey—as they trace his personal and intellectual journey across Beirut, Jerusalem, New York, and Oxford, using language as the thread. In this expansive conversation, they discuss the boundaries imposed and chosen in diasporic life, the shifting relationship between Armenian identity and language, and the surprising findings of one of the most ambitious studies of the global Armenian diaspora to date. From dialects and hyphenated identities to the politics of survey design, this episode explores how diasporic communities imagine and articulate Armenianness across generations and geographies.