Transplanting diglossia: attitudes towards Standard and Cypriot Greek among London’s Greek Cypriot community

The linguistic situation in Greek-speaking Cyprus has been traditionally described as a textbook case of diglossia à la Ferguson (1959) with Standard Modern Greek (SModGr) being labelled as the High variety and Cypriot Greek (CypGr), the regional ModGr variety of Cyprus, being labelled the Low variety (Arvaniti, 2011; Moschonas, 1996). More recently, however, it has been proposed that the linguistic repertoire available to speakers features an array of forms of CypGr, which is best described as a continuum ranging from basilectal to acrolectal varieties (Katsoyannou et al., 2006; Tsiplakou et al., 2006). The basilectal end encompasses low prestige varieties predominantly spoken in rural areas. The acrolectal end is occupied by the version of SModGr used in the public domain in Cyprus (Arvaniti, 2006/2010). SModGr is known to carry high prestige in Cyprus. Speakers of CypGr describe speakers of the standard as more attractive, more intelligent, more interesting and more educated than speakers of the Cypriot dialect (Papapavlou, 1998). In this paper, I explore the relation between SModGr and CypGr in a diasporic setting, namely, the Greek Cypriot community of London. The United Kingdom is home to a sizeable Greek Cypriot community, whose population is presently estimated to fall between 200,000 and 300,000 individuals (Christodoulou-Pipis, 1991; National Federation of Cypriots in the UK). Similarly to the Cyprus homeland, the members of the Greek Cypriot parikia (‘community’) share a rich linguistic repertoire, which, in addition to varieties of Greek, crucially includes English. As is often the case with diasporas, the parikia does not form a homogeneous speech community in that not all of its members have an equally good command of Greek or even English. Rather, different types of monolingual and bilingual speakers are found including a large number of heritage speakers in the sense of Benmamoun et al. (2013), Montrul (2008, 2015) and Polinsky & Kagan (2007). Twenty British-born heritage speakers of CypGr were interviewed on their attitudes towards the different varieties of Greek. Results indicate that the prestige relation between SModGr and CypGr that holds in Cyprus has been transplanted to the parikia. SModGr is widely perceived as the prestigious variety and is described in positive terms (‘correct’, ‘proper’). The use of CypGr, on the other hand, enjoys covert prestige: it is perceived as an index of solidarity and in-group membership but at the same time is also viewed by heritage speakers as reminiscent of the hardship and lack of education of the generation that brought CypGr to the UK. In certain cases, the use of CypGr by heritage speakers is actively discouraged by the first generation not only in the public domain but also in private domains such as the home. Active discouragement targets both lexical and grammatical variants that are traditionally associated with basilectal varieties of CypGr, and heritage language features, especially the adoption of morphologically adapted loanwords from English. References Arvaniti, Amalia. 2006/2010. Linguistic practices in Cyprus and the emergence of Cypriot Standard Greek. Mediterranean Language Review 17, 15–45. Benmamoun, Elabbas, Silvina Montrul & Maria Polinsky. 2013. Heritage languages and their speakers: opportunities and challenges for linguists. Theoretical Linguistics 39(3/4), 129–181. Christodoulou-Pipis, Irina. 1991. Greek Outside Greece: Language Use by Greek-Cypriots in Britain. Nicosia: Diaspora Books. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. Diglossia. Word 15(2), 325–340. Katsoyannou, Marianna, Andreas Papapavlou, Pavlos Pavlou & Stavroula Tsiplakou. 2006. Didialektikes koinotites kai glossiko syneches: i periptosi tis kypriakis [Bidialectal communities and linguistic continuum: the case of Cypriot Greek]. In Mark Janse, Brian D. Joseph & Angela Ralli (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, Mytilene, Greece, 30 September – 3 October 2004, 156–171. Patras: University of Patras. Montrul, Silvina A. 2008. Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism: Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Montrul, Silvina. 2015. The Acquisition of Heritage Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moschonas, Spiros. 1996. I glossiki dimorfia stin Kypro [Diglossia in Cyprus]. In “Ischyres” – “Astheneis” Glosses stin Evropaiki Enosi: Opseis tou glossikou igemonismou [“Strong” – “Weak” Languages in the European Union: Aspects of Linguistic Imperialism], 121–128. Thessaloniki: Kentro Ellinikis Glossas. Polinsky, Maria & Olga Kagan. 2007. Heritage languages: in the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Languages and Linguistics Compass 1(5), 368–395. Tsiplakou, Stavroula, Andreas Papapavlou, Pavlos Pavlou & Marianna Katsoyannou. 2006. Levelling, koineization and their implications for bidialectism. In Frans L. Hinskens (Eds.), Language Variation – European Perspectives: Selected Papers from the Third International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 3), Amsterdam, June 2005, 265–279. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Welcoming International Visitors - Communication and Culture

It is extremely rare for an international visitor to museums and galleries in the UK to find information in foreign languages which is anything more than a relatively literal translation of an English source text. At the same time, a huge body of research and theory in the humanities and social sciences implies that major cultural differences are likely to accompany the differences in first language of international visitors. As such, in spite of the fact that museums and galleries often declare their intention to meet the needs of their visitors, it is fairly clear that, in this instance, they are at best meeting their international visitors’ linguistic needs whilst ignoring their broader cultural needs. With this in mind, staff from the University of Westminster together with a number of London’s major museums and galleries obtained UK Research Council funding to work on the production of leaflets in foreign languages fully acknowledging cultural differences amongst international visitors. The collaboration was intended to generate reflection on how such materials might be most effectively produced, what impact they might have and what forms of policy review museums and galleries might as a result wish to undertake. The collaboration confirmed that cultural difference, and therefore difference in need, between visitors with different first languages is a simple reality. Translations, including ones which are culturally ‘adapted’ or ‘sensitive’, will always fall short of acknowledging the intercultural complexity of the experience of international visitors. Materials acknowledging that complexity are more effective. Museums and galleries need, therefore, to ask themselves how far and in what ways they wish to acknowledge this reality in the nature of the welcome they offer. The core of this article will draw on the outcomes of this collaboration, and also on aspects of translation and intercultural theory, to offer a critical exploration of some of the options museums and galleries therefore have in producing materials to welcome international visitors in ways which acknowledge the intercultural complexity of their experience.

Default Invariance: Naïve Category of Law and Finance

Default invariance is the idea that default does not change at any scale of law and finance. Default is a conserved quantity in a universe where fundamental principles of law and finance operate. It exists at the micro-level as part of the fundamental structure of every financial transaction, and at the macro- level, as a fixed critical point within the relatively stable phases of the law and finance cycle. A key point is that default is equivalent to maximizing uncertainty at the micro-level and at the macro-level, is equivalent to the phase transition where unbearable fluctuations occur in all forms of risk transformation, including maturity, liquidity and credit. As such, default invariance is the glue that links the micro and macro structures of law and finance. In this essay, we apply naïve category theory (NCT), a type of mapping logic, to these types of phenomena. The purpose of using NCT is to introduce a rigorous (but simple) mathematical methodology to law and finance discourse and to show that these types of structural considerations are of prime practical importance and significance to law and finance practitioners. These mappings imply a number of novel areas of investigation. From the micro- structure, three macro-approximations are implied. These approximations form the core analytical framework which we will use to examine the phenomena and hypothesize rules governing law and finance. Our observations from these approximations are grouped into five findings. While the entirety of the five findings can be encapsulated by the three approximations, since the intended audience of this paper is the non-specialist in law, finance and category theory, for ease of access we will illustrate the use of the mappings with relatively common concepts drawn from law and finance, focusing especially on financial contracts, derivatives, Shadow Banking, credit rating agencies and credit crises.