Mehrsprachigkeit in der Republik Moldau aus autobiographischer Perspektive

When talking of their everyday experiences with multilingualism and language contact, citizens of Chişinău frequently mention shopping and commerce, along with common transport. Indeed, since its independence languages in Moldova and the use of language have had great symbolic value in the social and political discourse. Linguistic dynamics in commerce show different patterns because with commerce, profit comes before politics. It is common for traders to adapt to the linguistic preferences of customers because they want to make sales, but even their pragmatic approach cannot prevent tensions. Trade is therefore a fascinating field and of enormous value to everyone interested in multilingualism in Moldova, allowing them to go beyond official discourse and sociolinguistic statistics. However, hardly any empirical study has ever investigated the linguistic interaction in those or any other everyday situations in the Republic of Moldova. Alina Tofan’s book, based on her PhD dissertation, makes an important contribution to plugging that gap by providing a detailed study of the linguistic biographies of retail sellers and market traders in an urban context.

The author conducted forty-two interviews to investigate ‘subjective theories’ of language and linguistic practice and has based her analysis on the individual linguistic identities of seven of the respondents. She has focused her interpretations on four aspects which are reflected in the structure of the book. She considers auto- and hetero-perception (Chapter 4, 50 pages), language acquisition (Chapter 5, 44 pages), language use (Chapter 6, 43 pages) and naming the state language, also known as the conflict over the glottonym (Chapter 7, 23 pages). The Introduction (33 pages) develops the notion of ‘sociolinguistic individuation’ and reveals the relevance of profession and commerce with respect to linguistic identity. It then discusses autobiographical narrative as an approach to the field. Chapter 2 (26 pages) describes the methods of data collection and analysis. Chapter 3 (37 pages) provides a useful overview of the history and current situation of sociolinguistic dynamics in the Republic of Moldova. However, the subchapters on the central topic of communication in business and commerce comprise only six pages. While they provide a useful overview of the legal situation of commercial communication, unfortunately they do not go beyond that. There is no commentary on the efficiency of those laws nor reference to public discourses on language use in the service sector.^[1]

The chapters illustrate how change to the linguistic regime since 1989 has significantly affected linguistic biographies and identities. They draw a convincing picture of different constellations of multilingualism as being normal (‘Mehrsprachigkeit als möglicher Normalfall’, 16).

In her conclusion, Tofan reveals that narratives of linguistic acquisition focus on Russian and Romanian/Moldovan, situating them within the diglossic linguistic relations in Moldova. Although they tend to ignore (‘de-biographize’, 269) foreign languages learnt at school, no interpretation of this fact is provided by the author. In the discussion of the narratives, a number of other relevant aspects are treated only as side-aspects. For example, the Republic of Moldova has a very high emigration rate and a very large proportion of Moldovans have experience of working abroad. However, only one of the informants cited in the book discussed his experience of living in Israel for a number of years. Given that the topic of migration is ubiquitous in Moldova and that it affects Moldovan linguistic biographies, it would be interesting to know whether that absence from the book corresponds with the relative scarcity among traders of individuals who have worked abroad. Or perhaps it was the author’s choice not to treat that particular subject?

It is striking that, according to their education, the majority of respondents were originally trained in and practised other professions, such as those of engineer or teacher, but then for economic reasons decided to switch to trade. That aspect is explored using the example of Maria, a former teacher of Romanian (205f). She faces the tragic situation that her high cultural and linguistic capital, in which she has invested time, energy and resources throughout her studies, has very little economic value on the labour market. Those and other aspects related to the socioeconomic situation are not extensively explored in the book because Tofan rigorously and coherently concentrates on biographical narratives and ‘sociolinguistic individuation’. The notion of ‘sociolinguistic individuation’ underlines the process through which individuals become aware of their linguistic identity. Conflicting discourses about identity and the symbolic representation of history are central to public debate in newly independent former Soviet states such as the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, they are highly politicised. Constructivist approaches are urgently needed that focus on the making and assuming of identities and on identity discourses. They are highly necessary to help understand complex conflicts and to avoid reproducing essentialist and reductionist visions.

In that sense Alina Tofan belongs to what Wim van Meurs has called a second wave of Moldovanists who have adopted a bottom-up perspective.^[2] Their interest is in everyday processes of identification of citizens as actors. Tofan’s research was in fact part of a larger project, financed by the Volkswagen Foundation, on ‘language and identity in multilingual situations’ and which was realized at the University of Leipzig between 2003 and 2006.^[3] However, apart from the notion of ‘sociolinguistic individuation’ the author does not explicitly draw on the insights of her colleagues’ studies to detect patterns or social discourses.

In sum, the book offers fascinating detailed individual biographical accounts of multilingualism and of complex linguistic identities and is therefore a good starting point for researchers keen to question simplistic views of mono-and multilingualism. The book is not only a must–read for anyone interested in individual multilingualism in the Republic of Moldova but is inspiring too for anyone interested in the linguistic situation in the post-Soviet space.