Abstract
The study was prompted by the question of whether Romani, the language of the dominant and traditional minority, is acceptable as a language in the profile of a bilingual living in the Czech Republic. It outlines the situation of Romani in the Czech sociolinguistic space and argues for its rehabilitation so that it could be studied, taught, maintained in a community, and used to represent its speakers. This is necessary in order to raise its prestige, positively affect its speakers’ identity and in turn stimulate an attitudinal shift and social change. Obstacles to Romani rehabilitation are related to it being framed by Czech culture, which is driven by a standard language ideology rendering Romani a stigmatized language. Romani speakers distance themselves from Romani dialects and the ethnolect as expressions of social and economic disadvantage. Recent research has established that Romani has shown signs of language shift.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Multilingualism and minorities in the Czech sociolinguistic space: introduction
- Part I: The Czech sociolinguistic space in the Czech Republic
- The Czech language of Jews in Přemyslid Bohemia of the eleventh to fourteenth century
- The Others in the Czech Republic: their image and their languages
- Romani in the Czech sociolinguistic space
- Czech Sign Language in contemporary Czech society
- Part II: The Czech sociolinguistic space abroad
- Texas Czech Legacy Project: documenting the past and present for the future
- Czech immigrant dialects in the Northern Caucasus and Western Siberia
- Czech language minority in the South-eastern Romanian Banat
- Transnationalism and language maintenance: Czech and Slovak as heritage languages in the Southeastern United States
- Book Review
- Patrick Studer and Iwar Werlen: Linguistic diversity in Europe: current trends and discourses
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Multilingualism and minorities in the Czech sociolinguistic space: introduction
- Part I: The Czech sociolinguistic space in the Czech Republic
- The Czech language of Jews in Přemyslid Bohemia of the eleventh to fourteenth century
- The Others in the Czech Republic: their image and their languages
- Romani in the Czech sociolinguistic space
- Czech Sign Language in contemporary Czech society
- Part II: The Czech sociolinguistic space abroad
- Texas Czech Legacy Project: documenting the past and present for the future
- Czech immigrant dialects in the Northern Caucasus and Western Siberia
- Czech language minority in the South-eastern Romanian Banat
- Transnationalism and language maintenance: Czech and Slovak as heritage languages in the Southeastern United States
- Book Review
- Patrick Studer and Iwar Werlen: Linguistic diversity in Europe: current trends and discourses