Language use in a Romani community in Eastern Slovakia, with special attention to language socialization and child directed speech
Abstract
The paper will present some preliminary results of an ongoing research on language use in a Romani settlement in Eastern Slovakia. So far, the insight into the language situation of Romani communities of Eastern Slovakia where Romani is spoken has been limited to general characteristics of diglossia (see for example Hübschmannová 1979; the use of the term diglossia was critisized by Pintér 2010) in Fishman's broad sense, i.e.
Romani being used within the community and a non-Romani code being used in communication with non-Roma. In general this fits also to the situation of the locality studied.
However, a more detailed approach to the use of different languages by the Roma, within and outside the Romani settlement, reveals a more complicated picture. For example discursive code switching (Winford 2003: 103) occurs. when speech of non-Roma is reported by Roma, when multi-word vulgarisms are used, markers of non-Romani etiquette (greetings, etc.) are used both as an expression of distance and as a source of amusement, etc.
The research started in October 2011 and is based on a series of short-term field trips carried out in two-months' intervals within the period of two years. Methods include mainly participant observation, writing field notes and audio and video documentation of everyday situations.
Apart from the project methodology two interconnected topics will be chosen for the discussion: language socialization (most recently Duranti et al. 2011) and child-directed speech. The study of language socialization addresses issues of how children are socialized through language(s), how they learn language(s) and are led to use them according to particular cultural norms.
The characteristics of Romani child-directed speech and its use (also within other than child-directed contexts) will be presented in extracts from video documentation and compared to previous findigs by Zita Réger in different Romani communities (Réger & Berko Gleason 1991, Réger 1999).