Language and Cultural Maintenance Among the Gypsies of Jordan

Abstract

In this paper we examine the language situation among the Gypsies of Jordan within the framework of previous theories on language maintenance and shift as proposed by Le Page, Fishman, Dorian and Kelman. The study investigates language and cultural maintenance among the Gypsies of Jordan to permit comparison of the relative influences of various social parameters on their use of both Arabic and Gypsy. Here we analyse a corpus of data collected from 100 speakers by means of a questionnaire and interviews. Evidence is presented that Arabic is used for various functions and Gypsy is still used in a variety of social domains, viz. home, neighbourhood, religious and cultural settings. Language maintenance is attributed here to the fact that the Gypsies find themselves unable to gain access to the majority-group culture, and thus they often come to be clustered in their own areas by the element of ‘necessity’ imposed on them by the majority host community. It has also been observed that the social and cultural isolation of the Gypsies from the Jordanian mainstream has contributed to cultural maintenance among them. A comparison between the results of this study and those of Al-Khatib's work on the Armenians of Jordan, another minority group inhabiting the country for the same period, shows that unlike the Armenians, the Gypsies of Jordan are experiencing a clear-cut case of language and cultural maintenance.