Editor for this issue: Zachary Leech <zleechlinguistlist.org>
Call for Papers:
Urban Multilingualism: Revisiting the relationship between language and social variation in Greece
Special issue edited by Angeliki Alvanoudi & Christopher Lees
This special issue aims to shed light on the relationship between language variation and ethnicity in 21st century Greece, an area of Greek sociolinguistics which has hitherto received little attention in contrast to international research, particularly in the English speaking world. Ethnic diversity frequently features in studies on identity construction or racism (see Archakis 2020, Archakis & Tsakona 2021), but there is a lack of systematic sociolinguistic fieldwork examining the linguistic repertoires of ethnic communities living in Greece, as well as attitudes towards urban multilingualism. Notable exceptions include the work of Chatzidaki & Maligkoudi (2013), Gaintartzi, Chatzidaki & Tsokalidou (2014), Gogonas (2009), Gogonas & Michail (2014), Ndoci (2023) and Panagiotatou (2021).
Greek society has traditionally subscribed to a monolingual ideology, particularly regarding education and social policy. However, over the last 30 years a number of historical, political and demographic changes have had a significant effect on the sociolinguistic profile of Greece's urban areas. In these new culutrally and linguistically diverse contexts, linguists are compelled to examine aspects of multilingualism in the form of ability, practice, stance, or ideology (see Auer & Wei 2007, Baynham & Lee 2019, Blommaert 2010, 2013, Blommaert & Backus 2013, Coulmas 2018, DuchĂȘne & Heller 2012, Pennycook 2010, 2021, among others).
The following research questions are of particular interest to sociolinguistic research:
- What is the social distribution and use of the various languages spoken in Greece? How does the public presence of these languages in the linguistic landscapes of Greek cities help us to map their geographical distribution and hierarchy in the local community?
- In large cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki, contexts of language contact emerge, in which minority languages coexist with Greek. What are the results of this contact, e.g. borrowing in migrant language varieties, language crossing, translanguaging, and translation?
- What stances do speakers of the minority and majority language(s) have towards the languages spoken in local communities? How do these stances, together with other social factors, affect language maintenance and language shift?
- How does gender infiltrate the relationship between ethnicity and language variation?
- How does linguistic nationalism in Greece become a tool for the suppression and exclusion of minority groups, as well as a mechanism for social choice, and encroachment on language rights?
- What is the emerging relationship between political economy and language in 21st century Greece?
We invite submissions of original papers, theoretical or empirical, written in either Greek or English, which are related to any of the above subject areas. Papers should ideally use methods from the sociology of language, critical sociolinguistics, language contact, discourse analysis, and ethnography. Submissions from early career researchers are particularly encouraged. Such submissions should attempt to show how the developing international interest in urban multilingualism can be applied to the Greek context.
Deadline for article abstract submission: 1st October 2023 ([email protected] & [email protected]) (length: 400-500 words)
Notification of acceptance: 15th October 2023
Article submission: 1st June 2024
Page Updated: 02-Jul-2023
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