The fragile future of the Cypriot Greek language in the UK

In this article, I reveal the difficulties faced by heritage language speakers in London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora

Mobile diasporas, postcolonial identities: the Green Line in Cyprus

This paper explores the scope for understanding postcolonial and hybrid identities through the theory of ontological security in International Relations. It examines the circulation of identity for a dispersed postcolonial population, namely Cypriots. This circulation happens amongst a deterritorialised public, through media and movement of people. It carries meaning that is formative of the identity of the diaspora and of the identity of the home state, implicating both in a complex and relational ontological security comprising identity, memory, state and society. The Green Line dividing North from South in Cyprus represents the bifurcation of the island, rupturing the possibility of a territorially unified Cypriot identity. The line also represents a rupturing of contiguous ethnic identities, marking the creation of refugee populations and Cypriot diasporas. The Green Line is both a physical location and circulating symbol of ontological insecurity. On one hand, the Green Line marks the creation of Cypriot refugees and diasporas. On the other, it marks a gateway to Europe for asylum seekers attempting to enter the Southern part of the island. I theorise the Green Line as an emblem of ontological insecurity whose meaning is (re)constituted in the lived experience of Cypriot diaspora and migrants seeking security, revealing a hybrid and fluid identity

Why and how to integrate non-standard linguistic varieties into education: Cypriot Greek in Cyprus and the UK

Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies and only accepts Standard Greek as the language of teaching and learning. • Cypriot Greek, the pupils’ home variety, is still seen as an obstacle to academic achievement by teachers and educational authorities. • Cypriot Greek needs to be integrated into policies and practices of teaching and learning both in Cyprus and in the UK’s Greek Cypriot community. • This will: o hone pupils’ awareness of different varieties; o foster the development of their critical literacy; o facilitate the acquisition of Standard Greek; o counter negative perceptions, stereotypes and feelings of inferiority associated with the use of Cypriot Greek; and, o aid in the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek as a heritage and community language in the UK. • Teachers and learning activities should promote and cultivate: o awareness and respect of the different varieties spoken in class, Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek; and, o awareness of vocabulary and grammar in the contexts of use of the two varieties and their social meanings. • This approach will ultimately change the way we view language and literacy learning

Why and how to integrate non-standard linguistic varieties into education: Cypriot Greek in Cyprus and the UK

• Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies and only accepts Standard Greek as the language of teaching and learning. • Cypriot Greek, the students’ home variety, is still seen as an obstacle to academic achievement by teachers and educational authorities. • Cypriot Greek needs to be integrated into policies and practices of teaching and learning both in Cyprus and in the UK’s Greek Cypriot community. • This will: o hone pupils’ awareness of different varieties; o foster the development of their critical literacy; o facilitate the acquisition of Standard Greek; o counter negative perceptions, stereotypes and feelings of inferiority associated with the use of Cypriot Greek; and, o aid in the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek as a heritage and community language in the UK. • Teachers and learning activities should promote and cultivate: o awareness and respect of the different varieties spoken in class, Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek; and, o awareness of vocabulary and grammar in the contexts of use of the two varieties and their social meanings. •This approach will ultimately change the way we view language and literacy learning

From village talk to slang: the re-enregisterment of a non-standardised variety in an urban diaspora

I explore the ways in which language ideologies are transformed when they are transplanted to diasporic settings as a result of migration. I examine the labelling of Cypriot Greek features as slang by young British-born speakers of Greek Cypriot heritage. Drawing on the analysis of data collected in a Greek complementary school in London, I suggest that slang is applied to Cypriot Greek through a process of re-enregisterment that redefines the contrast it forms with Standard Greek in the model of the slang vs posh English binary, which is local to the London context and is constructed along the lines of the ideological schemata of properness and correctness that also define the opposition between Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek in Cyprus. I propose that the policy and practice of teaching Greek in the school is a key enabler in this process as it constructs Standard Greek as a language that can and must be written and Cypriot Greek as a language that can only be spoken but never written. This allows complementary school pupils to draw links with institutional discourses they are exposed to in mainstream education about the inappropriateness of including elements of slang in their writing

The conflicts of a 'peaceful' diaspora: identity, power and peace politics among Cypriots in the UK and Cyprus

The thesis traces ethnographically the discursive, ideological and political processes through which connections between the Cypriot diaspora in the UK and Cyprus are imagined, articulated and (re)produced through peace politics and Cypriotist discourses that emphasise the need for reconciliation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots based on a common Cypriot identity. The fieldwork research was conducted between 2006 and 2008 in London and Cyprus, taking place at a very particular historical period, when a larger space apparently opened for British Cypriots’ involvement in the politics ‘at home’; I follow here their modes of political engagement across a number of actual sites and ‘imagined’ social fields –from community associations in London to online Cypriot networks; and from organised party groups in the UK to informal communal crossings of the Cypriot Green Line. The thesis ultimately presents an ethnographic account of Cypriotism and how individuals employ, perform and (re)define it within a transnational nexus of inter-related contexts, revealing that far from popular understandings of it as a unifying discourse, Cypriotism is also divisive and internally contested. Whereas anthropological work on Cyprus has been prolific in studying and analysing ethnic nationalisms extensively, Cypriotism in its own right has not been problematised enough beyond being treated as a counter-discourse to other dominant ideologies. The perspective of the diaspora helps to crystallise how discursive battles and exclusive ideas of ‘who is a Cypriot’ simultaneously challenge and (re)produce difference among Cypriotists. Moreover, to challenge the dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalisms of Western-centric discourses, it is argued here that the boundaries between Cypriotism and ethnic nationalism are more blurred than often assumed, especially as they co-exist and are employed in the cultural repertoires of Cypriots. The aims of the thesis, therefore, are threefold; first, it endeavours to illustrate empirically how connections between the Cypriot diaspora in the UK and Cyprus are constructed through ‘peace politics’ and how political subjectivities develop in such a transnational context by looking at the ways multiple agents mobilise, articulate and perform particular identities through the language of Cypriotism. To do this, the research methodologically integrates the ‘ethnography of the Cypriot diaspora’ with the ‘ethnography of Cyprus’, which have developed to some extent as two distinct study fields, through multi-sited fieldwork both in the UK and Cyprus. Moreover, with its focus on Cypriotism and how a Cypriot nation is (re)imagined within it, the thesis aims to contribute theoretically to ‘the anthropology of Cyprus’ by participating in ongoing discussions on nationalism and counter-nationalism, history and memory, identity and cultural ‘authenticity’

Interview with Stephanos Stephanides

No abstract (available)

Of Hubs and Hinterlands: Cyprus as an Insular Space of Overlapping Diasporas

This paper uses the metaphor of diasporic hubs and hinterlands to document and analyse the various diasporic formations that overlap and encounter each other on the divided island of Cyprus. After a review of the various ways that islands interface with migration processes and some essential historical and statistical background on Cyprus and its population, the paper considers a number of migrations/diasporas that are based on or affect the island. They include the emigration from the diasporic hub of Cyprus during the 1950s-1970s; return migration, both of the original emigrants and their descendants; the British military/colonial settlement of Cyprus; retirees and ‘lifestyle migrants’; and various categories of recent immigrants, for whom Cyprus is a diasporic hinterland. We draw both similarities and differences between migratory dynamics in the northern, Turkish Cypriot part of the island and the southern, Greek Cypriot part. In the final part of the paper we describe recent fieldwork on various spaces of inter-diasporic encounter in Cyprus