[MGSA-L] Hellenic Studies Lecture - Wednesday April 24, 2002, 4:30 pm

[Hellenic Studies]

                          PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
                      Program in Hellenic Studies
                         hellenic at princeton.edu

                  http://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/


                   DATE:   Wednesday, April 24, 2002
                           TIME:   4:30 p.m.
                PLACE: 58 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, NJ
                                Room 107

                                Lecture

                            Peter Mackridge
                          University of Oxford

     “Diglossia and the Separation of Discourses in Greek Culture ”

                Cosponsored by the Program in Linguistics

_______________________________________________________________________
 In my lecture I shall talk about the separation between literary and
non-literary writing that is one of the most significant and lasting
consequences of Greek diglossia.  In order to do this I shall focus on
developments at the turn of the nineteenth century and on the situation
at the turn of the twenty-first.

 I shall try to dispel three fallacies: first, that the conflict between
demotic and katharevousa was a conflict between spoken and written
varieties of Greek rather than between two varieties of written
language; second, that whereas katharevousa was artificial, demotic was
“natural;” and, third, the labelling by Ferguson (1959) of katharevousa
as “High” and demotic as “Low.”

 I shall argue that the language controversy reached its peak in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries precisely because demotic
presented a serious challenge to katharevousa as an alternative written
language, especially in areas outside poetry.  I shall sketch out the
conceptual worlds that each variety of Greek was linked to: katharevousa
put readers and writers in touch with modern western European concepts,
while demotic connected the writer and reader with the conceptual worlds
of Greek folk culture and traditional native rural values.

I see the language controversy at the end of the nineteenth century as
being a conflict between linguistic purism (keeping the two varieties of
language apart) and linguistic compromise (the enrichment of demotic
through katharevousa).  Today, despite the unification of the Greek
language since 1976, the separation of discourses still persists,
demotic words and forms appearing in literal and everyday use, while
semantically equivalent katharevousa words and forms are used in
figurative and scientific discourse.  I end by asking whether the use of
the Greek language today presents a picture of variety, richness and
freedom, or chaos, inflation and anarchy.


________________________________________________________________________

PETER MACKRIDGE is Professor of Modern Greek, University of Oxford, and
Fellow of St. Cross College.  He is the author of  The Modern Greek
Languag:  A Descriptive Analysis of Standard Modern Greek (Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1985);  Dionysios Solomos (Bristol Classical
Press, Bristol 1989)  and coauthor (with D. Holton & I.
Philippaki-Warburton) of  Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern
Language (Routledge, London 1997; reprinted 1999).   He has edited a
number of volumes, including  Greece: The Modern Voice (Review of
National Literatures, vol. V, no. 2, Fall 1974);  Kosmas Politis, Eroica
(Ermis, Athens 1982, reissued with corrections, 1986, 1988) ; Kosmas
Politis, Stou Chatzephrankou (Ermis, Athens 1988);  Ancient Greek Myth
in Modern Greek Poetry: Essays in Memory of C.A. Trypanis (London: Frank
Cass, 1996); (coeditor with Eleni Yannakakis) Ourselves and Others: the
Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford
and New York: Berg Publishers, 1997); and  Dionysios Solomos, The Free
Besieged and other Poems, translated by Peter Thompson, Roderick Beaton,
Peter Colaclides, Michael Green and David Ricks; edited with an
introduction by Peter Mackridge (Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 2000).

For further information about Hellenic Studies current events please
refer to the calendar posted on our website:
__________________________________________

http://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/calendar.html


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Program in Hellenic Studies
Princeton University
58 Prospect Avenue
Princeton, NJ 08544
U.S.A.
Tel.: (609) 258-3339
Fax: (609) 258-2137
Web: http://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/
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