Lecture ‘The Romani Language in the Linguistic Landscape of Serbia’

Dr Svetlana Ćirković, a senior research associate, will give a lecture titled ‘The Romani Language in the Linguistic Landscape of Serbia’, at the SASA Hall 2, on Wednesday, 7 June, at 1.30 p.m.

The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, its aligned laws and international conventions, guarantee minority linguistic rights to the Romani language, as well as to other national minority languages in Serbia. Nevertheless, the Romani language is still stigmatized and marginalized, which results in a rare public use of the Romani language and an increasingly rare passing of it from generation to generation.

This lecture aims to highlight the significance of the use of the Romani language in the public sphere of Serbia since the use of the language in the public sphere can recognize the language’s status, its usage, simultaneously identifying its vitality or vulnerability. Based on the research of typical domains of the Romani language usage in Serbia (such as the media, on digital platforms or websites), the lecture will discuss the use of the Romani language from top-down levels, i.e. a language use guaranteed by the system institutions and public and local policies. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of public use, violation of language rights and the like will be discussed. In the second part of the lecture, the ‘private’ use of the language will be considered, i.e. the bottom-up use of the language coming from the speakers of Romani. The discussion on the ‘private’ use of the Romani language stems from field research which recorded inscriptions in Romani – predominantly on sacral monuments and tombstones, which were initiated by individuals and/or locally organized groups, which indicate its symbolic function in the public sphere of Serbia. The end of the lecture will feature newly acquired data gathered in a pilot field research carried out as part of the Vulnerable Languages and Linguistic Varieties in Serbia (VLingS) project, which offers the foundation for the discussion of the private use of the Romani language.