Hellenes and Romans: Oppositional characterological figures and the enregisterment of Istanbul Greek

Abstract

Language users discursively circulate ideologies of identity, especially in stances taken while assigning social characteristics to enregistered personae. Previous research has demonstrated that with the Istanbul Greek diaspora, speakers use the emic terms of Ellines and Romioi to orient to or away from Mainland Greeks, respectively. In this paper, I discuss how Istanbul Greeks in Turkey relate such ethnonyms to linguistic features and how they rely on enregistered dialectal features to construct their ethnicity as Romioi in opposition to Ellines. These ethnonyms result in personae that are used stylistically, but in turn fractally (re)create differentiation into separate ethnic categories. Such sociolinguistic processes demonstrate how linguistic variation is socially embedded in a minoritized indigenous speech community. Studying variation in concert with ethnonym use shows how speakers add nuanced meaning to established identity categories and create new ones based on their lived experiences.