In Greece, the management of language otherness has been associated with a stigmatisation of ethnic difference. As Greece’s territorial expansion in 1864, 1881, 1913, 1920/1923 and 1947 brought non-Greek-speaking populations within state borders, the attribution ipso jure of Greek citizenship minorised different linguistic groups, Christians and non-Christians. Especially, since 1913, when Greece significantly increased her territory, minority protection has come under the spotlight of international consideration and guarantees. _x000D_
Ethnicisation of the territory is reflected in the assignation of place names that negate the existence, past or present, in the area in question of communities deemed antagonists to the majority. The nationalization of place names in Greece was accordingly highly political. It was effectuated by uprooting old names and bestowing apparently Greek terms in their stead, a process that amounted to a territorial appropriation that turned ‘geographic terms’ into ‘political mottos’. For Greece, as elsewhere in the Balkans, the symbolical effacement of Ottoman place names sought to prove continuity with a glorious national pre-Ottoman history. Thus ethnic homogenization of the territory would be a marker for the national belonging of the inhabitants._x000D_
The presentation seeks to discuss why and how language policies shaped, in the past decades, language minority rights in Greece, which were either reluctantly granted or ignored, and how dominant national ideology affected minority visibility through naming linguistic otherness. Often such policies were framed by international policies and legal regulations._x000D_

Konstantinos Tsitselikis
Professor, University of Macedonia, Greece

---

 
ID Abstract: 46