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This sociolinguistic study investigates the extent to which Arvanitika, a Greek-Albanian dialect spoken today only in a few areas of Greece, can be termed a dying language. This issue is discussed and evaluated on the basis of empirical data on the concrete factors threatening the language s survival, namely: a) sociodemographic changes within the body of its speakers, b) the linguistic ideology of the areas in which the language is spoken, and c) the recent influx of Albanian immigrants into this region. Linguistic identity, currently an issue of increasing urgency, forms the focus of this study of the inhabitants of a village in which Arvanitika is spoken. In the process, standard linguistic and historical forms of native-speaker self-representation in contrast to Others such as Athenian tourists or Albanian workers, as they appear in various narrative genres, are reconstructed and analyzed.The study s findings indicate that, within the case-study village, Arvanitika does indeed remain a living language within the niches and islands of everyday communication and that it is transmitted to the younger generation by means of numerous networks. This ability to survive can be traced in contradiction to the current theory of linguistic death to a special structural characteristic of village life. Because different groups of people inhabit the village depending on the season, Arvanitika has become a social kit necessary for the surivival of the village community. |
