engleski

Tilting at windmills or a sustainable model: Language policy and planning for Zadar Arbanasi – a participatory approach

The paper aims to discuss a present day situation of Arbanasi in Zadar, with a particular focus on bottom-up (grassroots) approach to language revitalization in the present-day context. Arbanasi is a language spoken by approximately 300, mostly elderly, people in the Zadar region of Croatia. Being moribund and nearly extinct (between 8a and 8b on EGIDS scale), Arbanasi is on the UNESCO’s list of highly endangered languages having also the status of intangible heritage in Croatia. As for language planning initiatives, they are hardly ever part of the formal language policy framework because, as stated, formal language policy does not regulate the status of small, non-national languages. For these reasons, we conducted participatory ethnographic research with the community from 2015 to 2017 trying to see what grassroots language planning initiatives existed and to examine to what extent we as researchers can contribute to these initiatives and revitalise the language. In this paper, we present some of the elements of the research in which we took an active part: an Arbanasi language course, a workshop with the community and the editing work on the Arbanasi handbook that is to be published in 2017. In order to contextualize our data we will also draw on interviews with the endangered-language community members that we conducted in 2015 and 2016. In general, the revitalisation efforts at the grassroots level are met with numerous obstacles common to such small communities. Disputes over orthography and the ‘correct’ version of language dominate the language course with another constant problem being the lack of attendees. Historical divides within the community came to the fore in our workshops and underdeveloped writing system challenged the systematic preparation of the handbook. One of the few remaining speakers suggested that trying to revitalise Arbanasi is like tilting at windmills, and there were several other occasions when we were reminded that this was the lost cause. However, with the new handbook being published in 2017 and transformations of the dominant discourse where the endangered language will not be perceived as of lesser importance the whole effort is perhaps not so donquichotesque as it seems.

Arbanasi, revitalization, participatory action research

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