Current Projects
Para-Romani varieties, which have a Romani vocabulary but use the grammatical frame of another language, typically that of the co-territorial majority language, are documented in historical sources from the seventeenth century onwards. However, the varieties spoken nowadays and labelled as Para-Romani are better defined as registers or styles of the respective majority languages, since the largest part of their Romani lexicon has been lost and they are only used in specific contexts. More recent literature on Romani reports on the existence of a Para-Romani variety in which a Romani lexicon is combined with Hungarian and used by the Romungros in Hungary.
The project, which is carried out in collaboration with Márton A. Baló from the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics and Mátyás Rosenberg from the Eötvös Loránd University, is the first attempt to collect data from this Hungarian variety. Based on historical data as well as newly collected data from social media and through semi-structured interviews, we look into the variety’s lexical and morphological features, its sociolinguistic functions and the situations in which the special vocabulary is activated. We will also try to discover its formation and emergence, by identifying the sources that may be considered the earliest written documentation of Hungaro-Romani.
Research: Zuzana Bodnárová, Márton A. Baló, Mátyás Rosenberg
Central Europe is linguistically a very interesting region, as all four major language families of Europe come together here: Germanic, Romance, Slavic, and Finno-Ugric. In the midst of this are the Roma and their heritage language Romani. Romani is prone to language contact as it is overarched by the language(s) spoken by the majority population among whom the Roma live. We are concerned with various aspects of language contact that gave rise to common features found in the languages of the region.
Currently, we are investigating the phenomenon of adding directions to remote places, e.g., going “out to Vienna” but “up to Graz”, which is typical of South German varieties. The same phenomenon is also found in Hungarian and Slovenian, as well as in the Romani dialects of the region. We want to explore why we use this form of place-making in our imagination and how it came to be a feature of our region that spans over structurally different languages.
Research: Daphne Reitinger, Jakob Wiedner
This project investigates literature written in minority languages of Southeastern Europe after 1945, looking at peripheral voices of a polyphonic and multi/plurilingual region. The SEE region, however, is not taken as a whole, but aims to concentrate on the countries of former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia), with comparison to practices in Romania, and the literary production of minority groups in these countries (e.g. Hungarian literature in Vojvodina; Istro-Romanian poetry in Croatia; German-language fiction in Banat; literature in different Romani dialects or in Yiddish etc.).
* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSC 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.
The intention is to give voice and increase the visibility of literary productions that are often not even translated into the majority languages, let alone into the languages of major circulation, thereby remaining largely unknown, unread, and under-analyzed. Comprehensive research into these cultural productions has not been done to date. Synchronically, the aim is to compare and contrast this phenomenon with other European regions, and also to look, diachronically, at the legal frameworks within which these literary productions have operated and existed since 1945. Working with writers, publishers, translators, cultural workers, institutions and communities in SEE is a key component of this project.
Research: Oana Hergenröther
By means of semi-structured interviews, conducted by a deaf Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) signer, the research project explores the language background and current language use of deaf migrants in Styria.
Research: Julia Gspandl
Video: "Project description in International Sign"
The majority of widely read literary works operate in the sphere of monolingualism – either in the original as the first language of the author or in translations aimed at a monolingual audience. In this project, the focus is on literary texts that break with this ‘monolingual paradigm’. The focus is on literary compositions by authors who cross linguistic borders (and in many cases also national ones) and use (one of) their second language(s) as verbal medium for their literary texts.
Translingual by definition, these texts frequently also address language use in literature through manifest multilingual strategies such as code-switching and language mixing, or latent strategies such as language references. English, the world’s most widely spoken second language, will serve as a departure to investigate such multilingual strategies from a literary studies perspective, involving linguistics and sociolinguistics when required. The aim of the project is to analyze the effects of the use of second languages in literature on the levels of discourse and story, and to situate them in the field of multilingual literary research.
Research: Lisa Schantl
The project explores the relationship between language and identity in Southern Africa, specifically focusing on the linguistic repertoires and voices in literary texts and films. Plurality and hybridity are seen as inherent aspects of linguistic and cultural practices in the region. They are believed to manifest in various forms within literary and cinematographic texts. The project seeks to explore the interplay between language, identity, mobility, and hybridity, with a focus on local cultural producers and an understanding of the larger sociolinguistic and literary-cultural contexts.
A key aspect is the agency of multilingual creators and performers in constructing identities through language. In terms of methodology, both sociolinguistic and literary-cultural perspectives are taken into account. The fluid and dynamic nature of language practices are highlighted, emphasizing the concept of the linguistic repertoire: the range of linguistic resources used in a work and their purpose in constructing, negotiating, and potentially negating identities.
Research: Angelika Heiling
Completed projects
Multilingual Styria
The interdisciplinary project Multilingual Styria describes multilingual practices and plurality in the Austrian province of Styria from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. A focus of the study are the correlations of dominant and dominated languages and varieties in the context of migration, aiming at an analysis of the localized outcomes of global dynamics. The socio-political relevance of languages for individual communities and, moreover, beyond that for society as a whole will be argued. The main objectives of the project were (a) to document regional linguistically based identity constructions, (b) to make visible and raise awareness for historically evolved plurality as a typical feature of the region, (c) to explore the sociolinguistic phenomena indicative of superdiversity resulting from more recent migration dynamics (Blommaert/Backus 2012), (d) to enable public participation through the interactive character of the project.
Multilingual Graz
Multilingual Graz documents the language plurality of Graz in cooperation with plurilingual speakers and their associations as well as educational institutions and municipal authorities. The in this way gathered information on languages in Graz is made accessible via a web page. In the future, this information will be used in trainings tailored to the needs of practitioners from various fields. Beyond these research activities, Multilingual Graz initiates and supports both cultural and academic activities with respect to multilingualism.
Multilingual communities in Graz
The study Multilingual Communities in Graz analyzed the sociolinguistic situation of three communities who have migrated to Graz during the last few decades:
- Speakers of Farsi of whom some are proficient in other languages of their region of origin;
- Speakers of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi from Rwanda and Burundi who, in addition to Swahili as lingua franca of their region of origin, use the former colonial languages English and/or French;
- Speakers of Turkish who often use other languages from their region of origin, predominantly Kurmanji.
Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data on language use, language attitude and language transmission. The aim of this project is to describe the linguistic plurality in the context of urban multilingualism while further demonstrating the socio-political relevance of individual languages.
ROMLEX – Lexikal database of Romani varieties
ROMLEX documents the Romani lexicon. Currently, users have the opportunity to consult materials in over 20 different dialects of Romani and to obtain translations into English, German, and other relevant majority languages (Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian, etc.) via a freely accessible web page.
QualiRom – Quality Education in Romani for Europe
The Plurilingualism Research Unit produced teaching materials in the Romani varieties of Arlije, East Slovak, Kalderash and Lovara. Within the framework of the project, Romani teaching can take place on different educational levels (primary to tertiary) and in different regions of Europe.
RomBase – Didacticaly edited information on Roma
RomBase offers information on the socio-cultural and socio-historical situation of the Roma. By presenting well-researched material, RomBase contributes to the decrease of prejudice and thus helps combat stigmatization and discrimination. It furthermore aims to improve the educational situation of and about the Roma by giving teachers and students an opportunity to seriously deal with their culture and history.