Abstract

Cécile CANUT
Romani language : an historical fiction

For a long time the various populations named, according to their stories and their trajectories, Gipsies, Egyptians, Tziganes, Gipsies, Roms, Sinti, etc, traversed many continents without worrying with the common origin of their language. Emergence of the State-nations and by-effect the rejection whose they were the object involved a standpoint of a small number of intellectuals eager to assert a political place. Without territory, without single religion, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, the new minority imposed itself in international space by the « invention » of a common language. This article recalls the historical process of linguistic essentialization through the study of the circulation of the discourses around the romani ib in order to analyzing the policy and economic instrumentalizations which result from it currently.

Keywords: Roma, Gipsies, discourse, commodification, languages, valorization

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