Ideologies and identity performance in users’ discourses about Romani-based special languages (‘Sondersprachen’)

• Matras, Yaron ^[2] ; Tribulato, Chiara ^[3] ; Wiedner, Jakob Anton Paul ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Graz

     University of Graz

     Graz, Austria

     
  2. [2] Aston Institution for Forensic Linguistics, Birmingham, UK;b Department of Hebrew Language, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
  3. [3] Department of Humanities, University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Venice, Italy

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• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 46, Nº. 9, 2025, págs. 2887-2898
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Drawing on users’ testimonials we discuss how peripatetic populations forge ideologies around their use of group-internal special vocabulary. We identify three recurring themes: The discourse of loss that purports to account for a language history marked by deprivation and anomaly and intertwined with a notion of incompleteness of one’s own identity; contemporary negotiation of identity that draws on external reference points to set boundaries towards others; and explications of language function, which reconstruct contexts of use. Our case studies involve the use of use of special vocabulary derived partly or mainly from Romani among English Gypsies, Norwegian Travellers, and the travelling Showpeople of northern Italy. We approach these Romani-based ‘special languages’ (‘Sondersprachen’) as acts of identity performance and revisit the hypothesis that they emerged through convergence between Romani speakers and indigenous peripatetic populations.