Greek-speaking enclaves in Pontus today: The documentation and revitalization of Romeyka

Sitaridou, Ioanna

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139245890.010

Cited by 24 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…However, this method would also be problematic because of the practice of overstating the number of village inhabitants in census in order to attract greater financial state support (since often census are used to determine allocation of state resources across regions). Furthermore, individual competence in Romeyka depends on numerous variables such as age, gender, migration patterns, and language use in the family, as we shall see in Section 5 (see also Sitaridou 2013). Thus, providing an accurate number of Romeyka speakers is methodologically (How do we define a speaker?…”

Section: Number Of Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this number may not reflect reality due to a biased choice of Turkish as mother tongue and exclusion of migration data (see also Özkan 2013;Brendemoen 2002;Mackridge 1987). An alternative way to approach this issue would be to rely on the number of recorded inhabitants for the villages, in which we know Romeyka speakers live (see Sitaridou 2013;Özkan 2013;Bortone 2009;Brendemoen 2006). However, this method would also be problematic because of the practice of overstating the number of village inhabitants in census in order to attract greater financial state support (since often census are used to determine allocation of state resources across regions).…”

Section: Number Of Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gender distribution of the overall 27 respondents is as follows: 21 females, 6 males. The unbalanced sampling is due to the male/female segregation in the speech community, whereby people of one gender have limited access to the opposite sex (see Sitaridou 2013). Speech community and gender aside, other social variables controlled for are age (13-78 years) and education.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Speech community and gender aside, other social variables controlled for are age (13-78 years) and education. The age groups are chosen according to distinct phases of life caused by major changes such as school entry, marriage or occupation and correspond for the sake of comparability mainly to the age groups in Sitaridou (2013). The age/gender distribution is displayed in Table 3: Table 3: Age/gender distribution of respondents.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter is known to bring to the fore difficulties when addressing delicate topics or taboos (see Garrett 2005). Indeed, Sitaridou (2013) reports that cultural identity is a delicate matter within the Romeyka-speaking communities; all the more given that 'social desirability bias' (see Garrett 2005) may then lead respondents to give replies that underline their Turkishness, especially when the researcher (i) is not from the community; (ii) carries out field work for the first time, and (iii) carries it out in Turkish (see also section 4.4), as it was the case in the present study (Schreiber 2016).…”

Section: Approach To Data Collection and Challenges In The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the sociolinguistic vitality of Istanbulite Romeyka: an attitudinal study

Schreiber

Sitaridou

2017

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Within the present study, we assess the sociolinguistic vitality of Romeyka, the only Asia Minor Greek variety, which, albeit endangered, is still spoken in the Black Sea region, Turkey (historically known as Pontus), by means of nine extralinguistic (i.e. sociological) and sociolinguistic factors, specially tailored for the situation of Romeyka. Our current vitality assessment addresses an Istanbulite community, although the results will be compared against a rural community in the Black Sea, namely 'Anasta' (Sitaridou 2013). We used the direct approach to conduct an attitudinal survey with 27 participants -the first of its kind for Romeyka-which allows us to track the interrelation of vitality factors. The most relevant factors for Romeyka's vitality were shown to be: (i) Turkish language policies and education; (ii) identity function of the language; and (iii) language competence. These factors were found to affect language vitality by influencing language attitudes. Furthermore, as an often-neglected factor, the language of data elicitation was taken into account in how it affects the answers of respondents. The following variables were also found to have an effect: (iv) age of the respondents, (v) gender, (vi) speech community; the latter is argued to constitute the most crucial factor for Romeyka's vitality.

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Section: Number Of Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%