Travellers And Their Language

This book explores the Irish Traveller community through an ethnographic and folk linguistic lens. It sheds new light on Irish Traveller language, commonly referred to as Gammon or Cant, an integral part of the community’s cultural heritage that has long been viewed as a form of secret code. The author addresses Travellers’ metalinguistic and ideological reflections on their language use, providing deep insights into the culture and values of community members, and into their perceived social reality in wider society. In doing so, she demonstrates that its interrelationship with other cultural elements means that the language is in a constant flux, and by analysing speakers’ experiences of language in action, provides a dynamic view of language use. The book takes the reader on a journey through oral history, language naming practices, ideologies of languageness and structure, descriptions of language use and contexts, negotiations of the ‘authentic’ Cant, and Cant as ‘identity’. Based on a two-year ethnographic fieldwork project in a Traveller Training Centre in the West of Ireland, this book will appeal to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language in society, language ideology, folk linguistics, minority communities and languages, and cultural and linguistic anthropology.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2.0, University of Potsdam (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Around 86.000 Irish Travellers live all over the world and define themselves by an unusual and unique lifestyle. They see themselves as a distinct ethnic group that lives within settled society. This view is underlined by a language that is only spoken amongst the members of the travelling community. Shelta – a language which strongly withholds the grip of linguistic researchers until today and which also protects its speakers and the community’s identity from non-acceptance and feelings of inferiority. In advance I have to make clear that many – though interesting – but conflicting assumptions have been made on Irish Travellers and have yet to be proven. Not only more research has to be done in order to discover the roots of Travellers and their language, but also a way has to be found to make it possible for Irish Travellers to feel like a part of the society they live in. In my paper I will briefly introduce the most important issues on Irish Travellers, go more into detail concerning the use and the structure of Shelta, and discuss the assumptions on its origin and value.

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