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E. Adamou (ed.), Le nom des langues II. Le patrimoine plurilingue de la Grèce, A. Tabouret-Keller (Collection ed.), Louvain-la-Neuve (Peeters, 2008)
This book offers a view on some inherited languages spoken in Modern Greece, namely: Aromanian (Dr. S. Beis, Academy of Athens), Arvanitika (Dr. E. Botsi, Konstanz University), Armenien (Dr. Evangelia Adamou, CNRS), Greek-Pontic (Dr. G. Drettas, CNRS), Romani (Dr. I. Sechidou, Aristotle University) and Slavic (Dr. E. Adamou, CNRS and Dr. G. Drettas, CNRS). Most of these languages are transmitted orally (when transmission still takes place), under their local, non-standardized forms. In some rare cases (i.e. Armenian and Greek-Pontic), a standardized related language is taught at school. Not allowing any social mobility to the speakers, those oral tradition varieties are used in parallel with other valorised languages, such as Greek and Turkish.
The naming act is analyzed in an anti-essentialist frame, as a process that has historical, ideological and discursive components and not as a natural, stable object. Both the official terminology (used by the linguists, historians, politicians and other actors) and the community's unofficial names are examined. Each chapter also provides the necessary linguistic, sociolinguistic and historical elements that allow the reader to comprehend the general context in which naming processes take place.
Participants in the Special Book Panel held at ASN 2008: Victor Friedman (U of Chicago, US), Brian D. Joseph (Ohio State U, US), Anastasia Karakasidou (Wellesley College, US), Stamatis Beis (Academy of Athens, Greece), Evangelia Adamou (Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques, France), Paolo Odorico (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France)