Subversive heteroglossia: Narrating Greek-Albanian language use in North-Western Greece
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Abstract
In the research on borderscapes, particularly in the Albanian-Greek borderland, explorations of identities and fluidity of socio-cultural boundaries play a key role. Based on several ethnographic interviews and participatory observation during short-term fieldwork in the Konitsa region of North-Western Greece, this study aims to explore the metalinguistic narratives of the local people coming from Albanian/Arvanitika-speaking families. We observe how Albanian and Greek language use is narrated across several generations of these families, shaping narratives of place-making and belonging. Drawing upon the theory of cultural intimacy, studies of linguistic ideologies, and discourse analysis, we examine the multiple controversies in our research participants’ metalinguistic narratives and indexical signs such as code-switching. Using an anthropological lens, we also trace how these people’s personal stories are affected by national discourses, and how the state’s discourses infiltrate local peoples’ metalinguistic narratives. As previous studies have shown, in a situation of heteroglossia, the low-prestige language is perceived “through the eyes” of the dominant language. Nonetheless, when subversive heteroglossiaoccurs, the dominant linguistic ideology is also internalized by the speakers, but it is deviated and reassessed in the attempt to build spaces of cultural intimacy.
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