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24 - The Standardization of a Stateless Language

from Part IV - Beyond the National

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2021

By
Yaron Matras
Edited by
Wendy Ayres-Bennett  and
John Bellamy
Wendy Ayres-Bennett
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
John Bellamy
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

The chapter outlines standardization efforts in Romani, where geographical dispersion and the absence of strong community institutions pose challenges to efforts towards unification, status regulation and domain expansion. Initial standardization efforts were localized and partly state sponsored, while others were promoted by networks of activists and supported by civil society initiatives as well as by European governance institutions. Transnational mobility since the mid-1990s, the expansion of electronic communication and the proliferation of both political networking and religious missionary activities among Romani communities have provided incentives and means for domain expansion. Romani literacy is characterized by the use of multiple variants in the choice of dialect and orthography. I show how the key features of ‘standardization beyond the state’, such as the role of networking among multiple actors and pluralism of form, are reinforced through the growing role of multinational institutions, increased mobility and the rise of electronic communication.

Keywords

Romaninationalismlinguistic pluralismcodificationtransnational language planningcomputer-mediated communication (CMC)mobility
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization , pp. 645 - 664
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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