Abstract
This chapter describes Romani usage on different Internet platforms, distinguishing between earlier (Web 1.0) and more recent (Web 2.0) technologies. Particular attention will be paid to users’ adherence to institutional literary practices and the characteristics of vernacular practices. At the same time, the identities represented or performed by Romani users in different virtual spaces will be also discussed. What emerges is a picture of a lively Romani Internet scene, roughly divided between activist and community spaces. In the absence of any authority, various language practices coexist. The domain expansion of Romani thus offers an example of how the blurring of institutional and vernacular literary practices might support the usage of minority languages outside their traditional domains.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2006. Multilingualism, diaspora, and the Internet: Codes and identities on German-based diaspora websites. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (4): 520–547.
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2007. Language choice and code switching in German-based diasporic web forums. In The multilingual Internet, ed. Brenda Danet and Susan Herring, 340–361. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2015. Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism 19 (2): 185–205.
Beluschi-Fabeni, Giuseppe, Elisabeth Gómez-Oehler, and Vasile Muntean. 2017. Funerale 2.0. Riti digitali ed emigrazione dei Rom Korturare. Zapruder 42 (1): 98–105.
Brüggemann, Christian, and Eben Friedman. 2017. The decade of Roma inclusion: Origins, actors, and legacies. European Education 49 (1): 1–9.
Crystal, David. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danet, Brenda, and Susan Herring (eds.). 2007. The multilingual Internet. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deuber, Dagmar, and Lars Hinrichs. 2007. Dynamics of orthographic standardization in Jamaican Creole and Nigerian Pidgin. World Englishes 26 (1): 22–47.
Friedman, Victor A. 1995. Romani standardization and status in the Republic of Macedonia. In Romani in contact: The history, structure and sociology of a language, ed, Yaron Matras, 203–217. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Friedman, Victor A. 1996. Romani and the census in the Republic of Macedonia. Journal of the Gyspy Lore Society, 5th ser., 6 (2): 89–101.
Friedman, Victor A. 1997. Linguistic form and content in the Romani-language press in the Republic of Macedonia. In The typology and dialectology of Romani, ed. Yaron Matras, Peter Bakker, and Hristo Kyuchukov, 183–198. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Friedman, Victor A. 2005. The Romani language in Macedonia in the third millennium: Progress and problems. In General and applied Romani linguistics, ed. Barbara Schrammel, Dieter W. Halwachs, and Gerd Ambrosch, 163–173. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Gajjala, Radhika. 2002. An interrupted postcolonial/feminist cyber ethnography: Complicity and resistance in the “cyberfield”. Feminist Media Studies 2 (2): 177–193.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 1997. Self-presentation and interactional alliances in e-mail discourse: The style- and code-switches of Greek messages. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 7 (2): 141–164.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2004. To tell or not to tell? Email stories between on- and off-line interactions. Language@Internet 1: 1–38.
Granqvist, Kimmo. 2006. (Un)wanted institutionalization: The case of Finnish Romani. Romani Studies 16: 43–62.
Halwachs, Dieter. 2011. Language planning and media: The case of Romani. Current Issues in Language Planning 12 (3): 381–401.
Halwachs, Dieter. 2012. Functional expansion and language change: The case of Burgenland Romani. Romani Studies 22: 49–66.
Hancock, Ian. 1993. The emergence of a union dialect of North America Vlax Romani and its implications for an international standard. International Journal of the Sociology of Languages 99: 91–104.
Hentschel, Elke. 1998. Communication on IRC. Linguistik Online 1 (1). Retrieved on 3 September 2019 from https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/1084/1773.
Herring, Susan. 2002. Computer-mediated communication on the Internet. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 36: 109–168.
Hübschmannová, Milena. 1995. Trial and error in written Romani in the pages of Romani periodicals. In Romani in contact: The history, structure and sociology of a language, ed. Yaron Matras, 189–205. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Hübschmannová, Milena, and Jirí V. Neustupný. 1996. The Slovak-and-Czech dialect of Romani and its standardization. International Journal of the Sociology of Languages 120: 85–109.
Hughes, Philippa. 2013. Language and the representation of Romani identity on websites. RomIdent Working Papers 23, University of Manchester, Manchester. Retrieved on 9 March 2019 from https://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/virtuallibrary/librarydb//web/files/pdfs/378/Paper23.pdf.
Iorio, Josh. 2016. Vernacular literacy: Orthography and literary practices. In The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, ed. Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Tereza Spilioti, 166–179. London: Routledge.
Lee, Carmen. 2007. Linguistic features of email and ICQ instant messaging in Hong Kong. In The multilingual Internet, ed. Brenda Danet and Susan Herring, 184–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lee, Carmen. 2014. Language choice and self-presentation in social media: The case of university students in Hong Kong. In Language and digital media, ed. Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg, 91–111. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lee, Carmen. 2016. Multilingual resources and practices in digital communication. In The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, ed. Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Tereza Spilioti, 118–132. London: Routledge.
Lee, Carmen, and David Barton. 2011. Constructing glocal identities through multilingual writing practices on Flickr.com. International Multilingual Research Journal 5 (1): 39–59.
Leggio, Daniele Viktor. 2011a. The Romani Internet: Language codification and identity formation. Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society, Graz, Austria. Available at http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/virtuallibrary/publications.html.
Leggio, Daniele Viktor. 2011b. The dialect of the Mitrovica Roma. Romani Studies 21 (1): 57–113.
Leggio, Daniele Viktor. 2013. Lace avilen ko radio: Romani language and identity on the Internet. School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester. Retrieved on 9 March 2019 from https://www.academia.edu/8766428/Lace_avilan_ko_radio._Romani_language_and_identity_on_the_Internet_Full_thesis_.
Leggio, Daniele Viktor. 2015. Radio Romani Mahala: Romani identities and languages in a virtual space. In Virtual citizenship? Roma communities, inclusion policies, participation and ICT tools, ed. Alfredo Alietti, Martin Olivera, and Veronica Riniolo, 95–114. Milan: McGraw-Hill Education.
Leggio, Daniele Viktor, and Yaron Matras. 2017. Orthography development on the Internet: Romani on YouTube. In Creating orthography for endangered languages, ed. Mari C. Jones and Damien Mooney, 119–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matras, Yaron. 1999. Writing Romani: The pragmatics of codification in a stateless language. Applied Linguistics 20 (4): 481–502.
Matras, Yaron. 2004. The future of Romani: Toward a policy of linguistic pluralism. Roma Rights Quarterly 1: 31–44. http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/downloads/2/Matras_Pluralism.pdf.
Matras, Y. 2005. The Status of Romani in Europe. Report submitted to the council of Europe’s language and policy division, October 2005. Retrieved on 11 September 2019 from http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/downloads/1/statusofromani.pdf.
Matras, Yaron. 2015. Language and the rise of a transnational Romani identity. Language in Society 44 (3): 295–316.
Matras, Yaron, and Gertrud Reershemius. 1991. Standardization beyond the state: The cases of Yiddish, Kurdish and Romani. In Standardization of national languages: Symposium on language standardization, ed. Utta von Gleich and Ekkehard Wolff, 103–123. Hamburg: UNESCO Institute for Education.
Mitra, Ananda. 2001. Marginal voices in cyberspace. New Media & Society 3 (1): 29–48.
Palfreyman, David, and Muhamed Al Khalil. 2007. “A funky language for teenzz to use”: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging. In The multilingual Internet, ed. Brenda Danet and Susan Herring, 43–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paolillo, John C. 1996. Language choice on soc.culture.punjab. Electronic Journal of Communication 6 (3).
Paolillo, John C. 2001. Language variation on Internet Relay Chat: A social network approach. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (2): 180–213.
Rajah-Carrim, Aaliya. 2009. Use and standardisation of Mauritian Creole in electronically mediated communication. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 14: 484–508.
Ruiz Vieytez, Eduardo Javier. 2001. The protection of linguistic minorities: A historical approach. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 3 (1): 44–54. UNESCO. www.unesco.org/shs/ijms/vol3/issue1/art1.
Sebba, Mark. 1998. Phonology meets ideology: The meaning of orthographic practices in British Creole. Language Problems and Language Planning 22 (1): 19–47.
Sebba, Mark. 2003. Spelling rebellion. In Discourse constructions of youth identities, ed. Jannis Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 151–172. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sperlich, Wolfgang B. 2005. Will cyberforums save endangered languages? A Niuean case study. International Journal of the Sociology of Languages 172: 51–77.
Szczepanik, Marta. 2015. Cultural uniqueness, memory of the traumatic past and struggle for equal opportunities in the present: A study of self-representations of the Polish Roma on the Internet. In Virtual citizenship? Roma communities, inclusion policies, participation and ICT tools, ed. Alfredo Alietti, Martin Olivera, and Veronica Riniolo, 135–145. Milan: McGraw-Hill Education.
Themistocleous, Christiana. 2010. Writing in a non-standard Greek variety: Romanized Cypriot Greek in online chat. Writing Systems Research 2 (2): 155–168.
Tseliga, Theodora. 2007. “It’s all Greeklish to me!”: Linguistic and sociocultural perspectives on Roman-alphabeted Greek in asynchronous computer-mediated communication. In The multilingual Internet, ed. Brenda Danet and Susan Herring, 116–141. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, Sue (ed.). 2004a. Multilingualism on the Internet. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6: 1: UNESCO Social and Human Sciences. Retrieved on 3 December 2017 from www.unesco.org/shs/ijms/vol6/issue1.
Wright, Sue. 2004b. Introduction. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6 (1): 5–13.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Leggio, D.V. (2020). Romani on the Internet. In: Matras, Y., Tenser, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28104-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28105-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)