32.3627, Review: Romance; Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Sorescu-Marinković, Dragnea, Kahl, Njagulov, Dyer, Costanzo (2021)

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Subject: 32.3627, Review: Romance; Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Sorescu-Marinković, Dragnea, Kahl, Njagulov, Dyer, Costanzo (2021)

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Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 13:04:32
From: Giustina Selvelli [giustina.selvelli at gmail.com]
Subject: The Romance-Speaking Balkans

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-1105.html

EDITOR: Annemarie  Sorescu-Marinković
EDITOR: Mihai  Dragnea
EDITOR: Thede  Kahl
EDITOR: Blagovest  Njagulov
EDITOR: Donald  Dyer
EDITOR: Angelo  Costanzo
TITLE: The Romance-Speaking Balkans
SUBTITLE: Language and the Politics of Identity
SERIES TITLE: Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Giustina Selvelli, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

SUMMARY

The edited volume “Language and the Politics of Identity. The Romance-Speaking
Balkans” is the result of the efforts of the Balkan History Association in
Bucharest and aims to contribute to a better understanding of the issues
related to the languages of the various Romance-speaking communities on the
Balkan peninsula. The relationship between language and identity politics is
explored by the authors in a number of countries in Southeastern Europe
(including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Serbia, as well as
Moldova and Hungary) and in various Romance-speaking communities: Vlachs,
Aromanians, Bayash, Sephardic Jews, Istro-Romanians, in a strongly comparative
and interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing history, sociolinguistics,
anthropology and even psychology. The sources used to examine this
relationship range from oral history (collected through ethnographic
fieldwork) to online Facebook pages, from literary sources to official
language policies.

The short introductory chapter explores a series of fundamental issues related
to the link between language and identity of the Romance communities in the
Balkans, all of which (except for those in Romania) live among
non-Romance-speaking majorities, where they thus do not represent the state
language, in a situation of linguistic and cultural contact that poses several
challenges to the preservation of their languages. Moreover, the Balkans are
described as one of the key regions in Europe and beyond where exceptionally
important phenomena such as “language contact, linguistic ideologies and the
politics of identity of the numerous peoples and ethnolinguistic groups living
there” (p. 2) can be observed. Explanations are given of the classification of
the four main Balkan Romance varieties, i.e., Romanian and the endangered
Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, as well as a clarification of the
(also endangered) status of Judeo-Spanish (Judezmo or Ladino) within the
Romance languages of the Balkans.

The first chapter, by Michael Studemund-Halévy, “From Rashi to Cyrillic.
Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish (Judezmo) Texts in Cyrillic” examines the issue of
multigraphism and script choice among Sephardic communities in Bulgaria
between the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. After
considering the religious and cultural factors that affected the choice of
script for the various communities in the Balkans, the author focuses on the
“contact character” of Judezmo, the language spoken as a mother tongue by the
majority of these Sephardic Jewish communities, and on the question of the use
of different writing systems for the transcription of their language in
Bulgaria. Also examined is the use of the Hebrew script in its Rashi version
and especially that of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was associated with
attempts to “Bulgarianize” the Sephardic community from within. In the final
part of the chapter, the author presents excerpts from rare texts written in
Judezmo with Cyrillic script, drawn from a series of late 19th and early 20th
century works published in the country, such as dictionaries, proverbs,
conversation guides, and others. These texts are particularly valuable as they
help to delineate a clearer picture of the multilingual and multigraphic
environment in which the Sephardic Jewish communities positioned themselves at
that time.

The second chapter, “Political Terror and Repressed Aromanian Core Identity:
Ways to Re-assert and Develop Ethnolinguistic Identity”, by Cătălin Mamali,
addresses the issue of the ethnolinguistic identity of Aromanian communities
and relates it to the challenges and violence experienced by the Aromanian
minorities throughout history, with particular attention to the totalitarian
regime in Romania. Drawing on concepts from social psychology (C. G. Jung, E.
Erikson, J. C. Turner) and philosophy, the author analyzes the external and
internal mechanisms that allow the maintenance of a distinct identity and
sense of self-awareness, relating them to the Aromanians, but also briefly
mentioning other communities (such as the Armenians), and discussing the key
concepts of “core identity” and “individuation”. Mamali also focuses on the
factors that support the community’s preservation of language in conjunction
with expressions of “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Landry & Bourhis 1997) and
determines the assimilation risks faced by these minorities characterized by
multiple identities, due to state neglect and acculturation dynamics, as well
as the post-World War II geopolitical context that prevented the maintenance
of transnational contacts between these communities.

The third chapter, “Sociolinguistic Relations and Return Migration: Italian in
the Republic of Moldova”, by Anna-Christine Weirich, deals with the status of
the Italian language in this Romance-speaking country, pointing out a number
of developments over the last 30 years since independence from the Soviet
Union. These have had a particular impact on the linguistic marketplace of the
capital Chișinău, leading to an increased demand for Italian language skills
and making this language “part of the ‘linguistic relations’ of Moldova” (p.
95). After examining the historical presence of the Italian minority in
Moldova (dating back to the end of the 19th century and now consisting of only
about a hundred members), the author problematizes the sociolinguistic
descriptions of the country, which do not provide a complete picture of the
second language or multilingual skills of its inhabitants. Using an
ethnographic approach based on the linguistics of migration (Krefeld 2004) and
the sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010, 2016), the author
focuses on the multilingual competencies of the employees of a call center in
Chișinău. She examines their work and educational experiences in relation to
the use of Italian and illustrates paradigms of Russian-Italian and
Romanian-Italian language contact in the repertoires used by both returning
migrants and locals, characterized by lexical and syntactic borrowing, as well
as code-switching.

Chapter four, “Between Ethnicity, Regionalism and Familial Memory: Identity
Dilemmas among the Eastern Romance Communities of the Balkan Peninsula”, by
Ewa Nowicka, discusses in a comparative way the challenges faced and choices
made by different Aromanian communities in three countries in relation to
identity models: Vlachs in Greece, Aromanians in Serbia, and Istro-Romanians
in Croatia. In relation to Greece, the author argues that belonging to the
Greek nationality is an inalienable part of the Vlach identity, whose cultural
expressions (such as language, folklore, dances) by no means assume a
political connotation, but are rather rooted in the categories of the local
and regional (p. 121). In relation to the Serbian context, Nowicka points to
the divide between the Aromanians (“Cincari” in Serbian) and the Vlachs of the
Eastern part of the country, whose identities and consciousness developed in
different ways, since the former group associated itself with urban elites and
the latter with the rural population, although both were equally exposed to
linguistic assimilation. Finally, the case of the Istro-Romanians is
illustrated. This term refers to the inhabitants of the Croatian villages of
Žejane and Šušnjevica in Istria, who define their highly threatened language
with different names: Zheyanski and Vlashki, and who often do not want to
openly identify themselves as Istro-Romanians and even less as part of the
Vlach groups in the Balkans.

In Chapter five, “Identity Constructions among the Members of the Aromanian
Community in the Korçë Area”, Daniela-Carmen Stoica employs a series of oral
sources collected by ethnographic methods to reconstruct paradigms of language
use among the so-called Farsherot community living in the Korçë area of
South-East Albania, close to the borders with both North Macedonia and Greece.
Highlighting the importance of oral history narratives for linguistic and
dialectal research as well as for historians and social scientists, the author
presents the results of her research, which focuses mainly on the discursive
practices of indexicality, local occasioning, positioning, and dialogism in
contexts of interactions and strategies of self-representation. Regarding the
former, aspects such as phonetic traits and styles of speaking are considered
in their relation to the restricted mobility of female speakers, which led to
a higher degree of preservation of the mother tongue. Local occasioning is
treated as a communicative process reflected in lexical borrowings from
Albanian and practices of code-switching which are indicative of the fluid and
dynamic identities of the Aromanian informants. Finally, in terms of
positioning and dialogism, relations with other ethnic and social groups are
discussed, such as instances of opposition to the Albanian majority and to the
former communist regime.

Chapter six, “Megleno-Romanians in the Serbian Banat. Colonization and
Assimilation”, by Mircea Măran, deals with the little-known story of the
migration of this Romance-speaking community from Yugoslav Macedonia to
Gudurica and other villages of the multi-ethnic Banat region, which began in
1946 and continued until 1956. The author describes the specificity of the
Serbian Banat context, previously characterized by the presence of the German
population and then hosting, in addition to the Megleno-Romanian migrants,
various Romance-speaking communities: an autochthonous Romanian minority,
Aromanians, as well as members of the Bayash community. Măran reconstructs the
fate of this minority language in the new geographical environment,
identifying the absence of state protection (due to the lack of interest on
the part of the communist authorities in introducing this language in
education and in the media) as a fundamental element that triggered linguistic
assimilation, and also discussing other important factors such as exogamous
practices, the low prestige of their identity due to negative stereotypes, the
erosion of family ties with relatives in the villages in Yugoslav Macedonia,
and the return of part of this migrant community to their homeland. The
confluence of these factors resulted in Megleno-Romanians becoming what Măran
defines as a “hidden minority” (p. 183) that identifies with the local Serbian
or Macedonian ethnic groups and never with the autochthonous Romanian group,
thus neglecting the opportunity to benefit from Romanian-language school
instruction.

In Chapter seven, “Nation-State Ideology and Identity and Language Rights of
Linguistic Minorities. Prospects for the Vlashki/Zheyanski-Speaking
Communities”, Zvjezdana Vrzić examines the current status of two highly
endangered Istro-Romanian language varieties in the villages of Žejane and
Šušnjevica in Croatian Istria, highlighting the discrepancy between the
delicate self-identification dynamics of these communities based on local and
regional affiliations and the one-dimensional, essentialist categories arising
from nation-state concepts. After a historical and linguistic
contextualization of the Istro-Romanian variants in the different political
contexts (Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Yugoslav, and Croatian) of Istria, the
author underlines the existence of multiple identity belongings among these
communities, which remain invisible to the exclusive selection of the various
population censuses of the last 70 years. In the second part of the chapter,
Vrzić assesses the negative impact that both Croatian and Romanian attempts to
impose an externally constructed identity affiliation have had on the
self-esteem and language maintenance process of these communities, and
describes the shortcomings of top-down policies, such as Romanian Law No.
299/2007, which ascribes a “Romanian” identity to them, and the ECRML
(European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages), from which the
Vlashki/Zheyanski populations in the Croatian state do not benefit at all, as
these communities do not express any explicit form of belonging to an ethnic
minority.

In Chapter eight, “‘What Language Do We Speak?’ The Bayash in the Balkans and
Mother Tongue Education”, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković considers the status of
Balkan Bayash Romanian, an archaic Romanian variety spoken by the Bayash, a
population considered Roma by the external majority population and whose
identity is associated by the community itself with different ethnic and
national communities: Roma, Romanian, and an identity independent of these
two. After explaining the use of “Bayash” as an umbrella term for these
heterogeneous communities, which often share the same traditional vocation of
woodcraft and are referred to differently in the various countries of the
region, the author discusses the importance of the process of “ideological
clarification” (as overcoming a state of linguistic-ideological confusion, p.
214) and considers it a prerequisite for a minority language community to
initiate any attempt at language preservation. After examining the development
of this process of consciousness-raising regarding the status of the language
in a series of countries, including Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary,
Sorescu-Marinković focuses on the standardization and educational challenges
faced by these communities and presents, among much information, the
fascinating cases of Hungarian schools teaching the Boyash language in the
city of Pécs.

The ninth and final chapter, “Performing Vlach-ness Online: The Enregisterment
of Vlach Romanian on Facebook”, by Monica Huțanu, looks at the
representational practices of Eastern Serbia Vlach communities on a Facebook
page which is dedicated to metapragmatic paradigms of this community’s
linguistic expressions. After examining the diverging views on identity held
by the two main factions of the Vlach community, composed of pro-Romanian
“reintegrationists” (who prefer to use the Latin script) and pro-Vlach
“independentists” (who favor the Cyrillic script), The author highlights the
role of new online media and websites in the revitalization and preservation
of the language, focusing on the Facebook page “Vlasi na kvadrat”, whose
audience consists of both factions of the Vlach community as well as the
Serbian audience and the Vlach diaspora abroad. In describing the data and
methodology of her research on the Facebook page, the author discusses the
concept of “enregisterment”, defining it as the use of a set of linguistic
repertoires of a particular community to socially identify it in the eyes of
internal and external members, as part of the visible representation of the
community’s identity. She provides concrete examples of such practices (which
assume a highly self-ironic value) by referring to the use of the suffix -ešće
and the exclusive use of the affricate ć (instead of the use of both č and ć
in Serbian) by Vlach Romanian speakers on this Facebook page.

EVALUATION

This interdisciplinary and comprehensive work represents a much-needed
contribution to the field of minority/endangered languages and
multilingualism/plurilingualism in the Balkans. The heterogeneity of the
chapters, based on different disciplinary perspectives and covering a wide
range of topics related to language and identity politics, fulfils the aim of
providing a clearer picture of the patterns of linguistic and cultural
diversity in the Balkan Peninsula, exemplified by the different
Romance-speaking communities. The diversity of languages and approaches
included does not undermine the coherence of the work, but rather helps to
engage the reader’s interest and familiarize the reader with the different
contexts and implications of language use.

The book’s most valuable merit is certainly the achievement of its stated aim
(p. 4) of analyzing the delicate issues of language and identity through an
inclusive framework that takes into account the interdependence and
relationality between the cultures of the various ethnolinguistic communities
on the Balkan Peninsula and the transnational character of their lives, as
opposed to national or ethnic visions that favor simplistic and essentialist
explanations over the complexity and diversity that characterize such
phenomena. This is particularly evident in the chapters that take into account
multiple geographical contexts (Chapter 4 by Nowicka, which deals with the
cases of the Aromanians in Greece, Serbia, and Croatia, and Chapter 8 by
Sorescu-Marinković, which addresses the different identity configurations of
the Bayash in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and elsewhere) and the
diversity of the speakers of the Romance languages in question (e.g., the
informants coming from both majority and minority populations displaying
instances of translingual practices in Moldova, explored in Chapter 3 by
Weirich); it is however, a general feature that can be seen in all
contributions.

The relational perspective (already advocated, for example, in Daskalov &
Marinov 2013) applied to the study of delicate minority identities in the
Balkans still seems to be rather absent from the field of Balkan studies,
which is due to the various “national” or sometimes even “nationalist” biases
and exclusive sectorializations (in the sense of specialization in one
language or language family exclusively) that affect historiographical and
linguistic research and do not allow for an integral understanding of the
Balkans as the language/cultural contact area par excellence in Europe.

The authors who have contributed to this volume have managed to avoid this
dangerous shortcoming by adopting a truly multilingual and minority
perspective that does not neglect the pluridimensional and multilayered
linguistic identities of the communities concerned. They all help to delineate
a clearer framework of the plurilingual competences and of the patterns of
“small-scale multilingualism” (Lüpke 2016, Singer & Harris 2016) that persist
in this part of Europe as a remnant of the imperial past, and that are being
eroded due to urbanization processes, migration, and the changing “linguistic
marketplace” of the 21st century.

In relation to this “imperial legacy”, many of the contributions have the
important merit of shedding light on the adverse effects of the phenomena of
multilingualism and multiple identities that have resulted from the
establishment of new borders since the affirmation of nation-state entities
following the demise of the multiethnic Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, as well
as in the context of the policies of communism towards these minorities.

I believe that this volume will be of particular use to all scholars and
students interested in issues of linguistic diversity in the Balkans, not only
to experts in Romance languages, but also to those who wish to explore the
fascinating issues of multilingualism and minority languages in various urban
and non-urban “post-imperial” contexts, with meaningful links to other
communities in the wider Eurasian space. Moreover, I think it sets an
important precedent and example that can inspire other experts to work on a
similar project focusing on the languages of further minority groups in the
Balkans in a transnational perspective.

As a final note, I would only like to add that it would have been very useful
to include an ethnolinguistic map of the Balkans indicating the areas
inhabited by the Romance-speaking communities concerned, although I am aware
of the challenges and difficulties of such additional work.

REFERENCES

Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge, UK,
New York: Cambridge University Press

Blommaert, Jan. 2016. “From mobility to complexity in sociolinguistic theory
and method”. In: Nikola Coupland (ed.): Sociolinguistics. Theoretical debates.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 242-259.

Daskalov, Roumen & Marinov, Tchavdar (eds.). 2013. Entangled Histories of the
Balkans Vol. 1. National Ideologies and Language Policies. Leiden: Brill.

Krefeld, Thomas. 2004. Einführung in die Migrationslinguistik. Von der
Germania Italiana in die Romania multiple. Tübingen: Narr.

Landry, Rodrigue & Bourhis Richard Y. 1997. “Linguistic Landscape and
Ethnolinguistic Vitality. An Empirical Study”. In Journal of Language and
Social Psychology 16 (1): 23-49.

Lüpke, Friederike. 2016. “Uncovering Small-Scale Multilingualism.” In Critical
Multilingualism Studies 4 (2): 35-74

Singer, Ruth, & Harris, Salome. 2016. “What practices and ideologies support
small-scale multilingualism? A case study of Warruwi Community, northern
Australia”. In International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2016 (241)
163: 208.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Giustina Selvelli is a Postdoctoral Research Grant Holder at the Department of
Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, University Ca’ Foscari of Venice
(Italy), working on a project dealing with the patterns of “post-imperial”
multilingualism in three cities of the Balkan Peninsula. She has lectured on
topics related to the ethnolinguistic minorities of Southeast Europe at the
University of the Aegean in Mytilene, the Yildiz Technical University in
Istanbul and the University of Klagenfurt. Her research interests include
script choice and biscriptality, language ideologies, language policy,
language and diaspora, literature and media of ethnolinguistic minorities,
language activism.





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