Affect without transmission: Language Attitudes, Status, and Shift in Homshetsma and Romeyka
59th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Osnabrück, Almanya, 26 - 29 Ağustos 2026, ss.616-618, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Osnabrück
- Basıldığı Ülke: Almanya
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.616-618
- Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Affect Without Transmission: Language A5tudes, Status, and Shift in Homshetsma and Romeyka
Gülay Akın, Ioanna Sitaridou
(Karadeniz Technical University, University of Cambridge)
This paper explores language attitudes, perceived language status, and language shift in Homshetsma and Romeyka communities in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea region through a linguistic ecology and affect- oriented framework. Although Homshetsma and Romeyka belong to different language families and have distinct historical trajectories, they are examined comparatively because they exist within a shared regional linguistic ecology shaped by overlapping sociolinguistic processes, including migration, exogamy, socioeconomic transformation, and intergenerational language shift. Since Turkey does not officially endorse the Council of Europe’s (1992) distinction regarding regional or minority languages and recognizes only Armenian, Greek, and Jewish communities as minorities under the Lausanne Treaty (1923), this study adopts the term heritage language to emphasize intergenerational cultural inheritance, symbolic value, and shifting patterns of use without implying official minority status.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2022, the study investigates how speakers and heritage community members with varying levels of language competence evaluate their
heritage languages, how these evaluations relate to cultural practices, and why strong emotional attachment does not necessarily lead to intergenerational transmission. Drawing on linguistic ecology
(Haugen, 1972), language attitudes are conceptualized as emerging from speakers’ social, economic, and cultural interactions. Within this framework, affective orientations such as pride, intimacy,
nostalgia, and belonging shape how heritage languages are experienced and valued, whileinstrumental evaluations concerning perceived status, educational value, and socioeconomic utility
influence language transmission decisions.
The analysis is based on participant observation and informal interviews conducted in Sürmene, Çaykara, and Tonya (Romeyka-speaking communities), Hopa and Kemalpaşa (Homshetsma-speaking
communities), and Çamlıhemşin and Hemşin (heritage community members). The dataset includes 60 Romeyka speakers, 57 Homshetsma speakers, and 103 heritage community members who do not
actively speak Homshetsma but whose Turkish usage contains lexical, expressive, and toponymic traces of the language. This design enables comparison across different levels of language competence,
use, and passive linguistic affiliation within the same regional linguistic ecology.
The study addresses two research questions: (1) How do Homshetsma and Romeyka speaker communities affectively and instrumentally evaluate their heritage languages? and (2) How are these
evaluations and cultural practices mutually implicated in contexts where language transmission is weakening? Findings reveal similar patterns across both communities. Participants express strongly positive
emotional orientations toward their heritage languages, describing them as identity-affirming, culturally meaningful, and deeply connected to family memory, local belonging, and communal
history. However, these affective orientations coexist with perceptions of low prestige and limited economic value. Speakers, particularly parents, do not view Homshetsma or Romeyka as resources
that can contribute to children’s educational or professional futures. Consequently, while speakers value the languages symbolically and continue using them within peer networks, deliberate
intergenerational transmission remains limited.
The study concludes that emotional attachment and cultural continuity alone are insufficient for language maintenance when broader socioeconomic pressures position heritage languages as culturally valued but instrumentally marginal. Under such conditions, Homshetsma and Romeyka increasingly persist through traditional songs, oral narratives, culturally marked expressions, and
memory practices as symbols of identity and communal belonging rather than actively transmitted languages of everyday intergenerational communication.
Keywords: linguistic ecology; language attitudes; heritage languages; language shift; affect and language
References
Haugen, E. (2001). The ecology of language. In A. Fill & P. Mühlhäusler (Eds.), The ecolinguistics reader:
Language, ecology and environment (pp. 57–66). London: Continuum.