Language and Identity of the Balkan Sephardim across the Generations

This paper presents, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the relationship between language and the identity of the Sephardim on the Orient over times, but it also analyzes their present situation and the perspectives for preservation in the future. It shows that the phenomena that the Sephardic language has experienced across the generations (maintenance/shift, loss and death of language) have mainly been due to ideological and identity issues. Similarly, the phenomena that have arisen among the Sephardim over the last two or three decades, mostly related to linguistic loyalty and the understanding that the language is a valuable resource, seem to be a consequence of reconsideration of the Sephardim of their ethnicity and ethnic and national identity in the modern world.

The aim of this analysis is to demonstrate that adequate terminological, methodological and theoretical apparatus developed within the scope of sociolinguistics and other related disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, social psychology of language, etc., can shed light on complex relations between language, ideologies and identity.