Lukas D. Tsitsipis. A linguistic anthropology of praxis and language shift: Arvanítika (Albanian) and Greek in contact. (Oxford Studies in Language Contact.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 163. Hb. $78.00.

Extract

Tsitsipis's valuable and sophisticated linguistic-anthropological study reports on research conducted over a number of years in two Albanian-speaking communities in southern Greece, Spáta in the district of Attika, and Kiriáki in the district of Biotia. These towns historically spoke Arvanítika, a Tosk dialect of Albanian. Although both communities date at least to the fourteenth century, they contrast sharply in that the first is very close to Athens, while the second is in a mountainous, isolated area. Kiriáki has a younger generation of fluent Arvanítika speakers, but language shift to Greek is advanced in both communities – shaped, according to Tsitsipis, not only by economic changes involving improved transportation and communication, the mechanization of agriculture, and urbanization, which have accelerated since the 1950s, but also by the ideological formations associated with the consolidation of the Greek nation-state, dating from the mid-19th century. The latter process focused symbolically on the exaltation of the heritage of the Greeks, and especially of their language. While adding considerable nuance to our understanding of the situation, Tsitsipis confirms the findings of Eric Hamp (1978:161–62; quoted by Tsitsipis on p. 11) that Arvanítika speakers “unflinchingly and happily accept the axioms that Greek is the oldest culture, Greek literature the first … and the Greek language the oldest, the richest … the only one with a true grammar.