Yaron Matras
Biographic Data
| ID | 253096 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yaron Matras |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yaron |
| FAMILY NAME | Matras |
| SIGNATURE | MATRAS Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9840-0277 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 95 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Contact in a Diaspora Language: Hasidic Yiddish in New York
We define Hasidic Yiddish in New York as a ‘diaspora language’ spoken in trans-local, trans-national communities by descendants of migrants with no direct connection to a homeland or monolingual baseline. Drawing on a corpus of recordings of public speech, we test predictions of a model that regards borrowing as alteration of routines of managing a multilingual repertoire, conditioned by several pull factors. We identify borrowings from American …
Ideologies and identity performance in users’ discourses about Romani-based special languages (‘Sondersprachen’)
Drawing on users' testimonials we discuss how peripatetic populations forge ideologies around their use of group-internal special vocabulary.We identify three recurring themes: The discourse of loss that purports to account for a language history marked by deprivation and anomaly and intertwined with a notion of incompleteness of one's own identity; contemporary negotiation of identity that draws on external reference points to set boundaries tow…
Language as a diasporic stance: Polish in a migrant urban space
Drawing on an evaluation of statistics on language provisions and self-declared language practice, and on longitudinal ethnographic observations, we examine the role of the Polish language in shaping single transactions and durable social bonds and in demarcating interaction spaces among Polish immigrants in a UK metropolitan area. Language choice can be essential, in that it cannot be replaced by a substitute. Therefore, it is either constitutiv…
Actors’ discourses on language supplementary schools: Diaspora practices and emerging ideologies
Drawing on interviews with staff from Language Supplementary Schools (LSS) in Manchester (UK), we discuss the emergence of makeshift ideologies whereby actors seek to legitimise choices and policies of heritage language transmission in the diaspora setting. Actors discuss the use of regional and vernacular varieties, the consideration given to pupils’ multilingual repertoires, and the use of the majority language (English) as ‘scaffold’. Consciou…
Process, tools and agendas in Lado
After recapitulating my arguments about methodological flaws in the practices of the company Verified AB in language analysis for the determination of origin (LADO) in asylum procedures, I respond to criticisms of my proposals for an alternative protocol and review the relevance of qualifications, control samples, language variation and scales. I then discuss the interplay of professional competence, ideological bias and understandings of the tas…
Using smartphones to document linguistic landscapes: The LinguaSnapp mobile app
LinguaSnapp is a smartphone application developed to support documentation of linguistic landscapes, especially in multilingual urban settings. Since its launch in Manchester in 2016, bespoke versions have also been created for Melbourne, Jerusalem, St Petersburg and Hamburg. We describe the rationale and the operational setup behind the app, and provide examples of how the documentation facility can support analyses pertaining to the relation be…
The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact
Signage as event: Deriving ‘community’ from language practice
Our aim in this paper is to propose a framework to analyse the relationship between language choice on signs in multilingual environments, place, and notions of ‘community’. We focus on an interpretation of the goals pursued by sign owners, exploring how linguistic (and non-linguistic) resources are mapped onto communicative acts to target addressees and initiate some form of encounter or engagement. We approach signs as complex and multi-layered…
Defining the position of ‘community’ in the study of linguistic landscapes
This special issue explores how multilingual (and semiotic) landscapes relate to constructions of community. With the present introduction we aim to embed theoretical notions of ‘community’ into the study of Linguistic Landscapes (henceforth LL). We first discuss how the notion of ‘community’ has been applied in previous LL research, and then introduce some relevant theoretical notions of ‘community’, which, in the final part, we seek to position…
Attitudes to the language and identity of Romanian Roma migrants in a UK school setting
Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, we discuss teachers’ narratives about the language and identity of Roma pupils and compare them with those of the pupils themselves. We explore the sources of information that shape teachers’ dispositions, category conflation (of Roma with ‘Gypsies/Travellers’) and lack of information on sociolinguistic repertoires. We discuss the risks of targeted, scripted institutional narr…
Romani self-appellations in a linguistic perspective: A reply to Leonardo Piasere
Rejoinder to Leonardo Piasere, 2019, Pour une histoire des auto-dénominations romanès, Anuac, 8, 1: 85-118
Roma populations and health inequalities: A New Perspective
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of “Roma health and wellbeing” as a focus of attention in European research and in policy and the possible detrimental consequences of action founded on a generic representation of “Roma health.” Design/methodology/approach Based on discussions with and research conducted by scholars who work directly with Roma communities across European regions from a wide range of academic disciplin…
Duly verified? Language analysis in UK asylum applications of Syrian refugees
This article examines current LADO (Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin) practice as documented in a sample of recent reports that assess the speech of Syrian asylum seekers. I show how a method that purports to ensure transparency of data, and contextualisation of the analysis in published research, presents certain problems by framing the question of linguistic background as two juxtaposed hypotheses. I suggest that this approach …
Shaping policy and practice through co-production: MigRom engagement with Romanian Roma and the ‘Manchester Model’
Multilingual repertoire management and illocutionary functions in Yiddish signage in Manchester
Parity of Participation' and the Politics of Needs Interpretation: Engagement with Roma Migrants in Manchester
Service providers in Western welfare states have to engage with an increasingly differentiated citizenry. The arrival of new migrant communities triggers debates, negotiations and struggles over the needs of these communities and how service providers can engage with them. In this paper, we look at these processes of developing local social inclusion policies that target migrant communities through the perspective of Nancy Fraser's 'politics of n…
Creating Orthographies for Endangered Languages
Letter from the outgoing Editor: From Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society to Romani Studies : Purpose and essence of a modern academic platform
Urban Multilingualism and the Civic University: A Dynamic, Non-Linear Model of Participatory Research
Drawing on the example of Multilingual Manchester, we show how a university research unit can support work toward a more inclusive society by raising awareness of language diversity and thereby helping to facilitate access to services, raise confidence among disadvantaged groups, sensitise young people to the challenges of diversity, and remove barriers. The setting (Manchester, UK) is one in which globalisation and increased mobility have create…
Variation and dialect levelling in the Romani dialect of Ţăndărei
The Kangjlari of Ţăndărei in southeastern Romania offer an interesting case study of the consolidation within just a few generations of a new Romani community, as a result of state-sponsored relocation and settlement between 1950 and 1980. We discuss the linguistic implications of the formation of this new community, drawing on language material from questionnaire elicitation and life history interviews among recent migrants now living in the UK,…
Using the school setting to map community languages: A pilot study in Manchester, England
Recording the home languages of schoolchildren has long been acknowledged as a useful way of mapping community multilingualism. However, the need to process large quantities of data on many different languages has meant that in order to assess the vitality of community languages, researchers have had to rely on schoolchildren's self-reported language preference and proficiency. Moreover, large scale data collection among minors poses ethical and …
Multilingualism in a post-industrial city: Policy and practice in Manchester
Manchester (England), one of the first industrial cities, is now home to over 150 languages. Ethnic minority and migrant communities take active steps to maintain heritage languages in commerce and through education. The paper introduces a model for a holistic approach to profiling urban multilingualism that relies on triangulating a variety of quantitative data sets, observations, and ethnographic interviews. We examine how responses to language…
Transnational policy and 'authenticity' discourses on Romani language and identity
Romani is a fascinating test case for the role that language plays in the process of identity consolidation in a transnational context. Standardisation is no longer inherently connected to the 'territorialisation' of language. Instead, we witness a bottom-up process in which individuals take ownership of language and negotiate language practices. Status regulation and language planning can be instigated and even implemented by institutions other …
Obituary: Gilad Margalit, 1959-2014
Gilad Margalit, Professor of General History at Haifa University, died on 23 July 2014 in his home after a battle against a brain tumour. He was 54 years old. Margalit grew up in Haifa and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1996 working under the supervision of Professors Moshe Zimmermann and Dan Diner. Margalit's research on policies toward Gypsies in post-war Germany broke new ground both in the …
Contact Languages: A Comprehensive Guide
Romani migrations in the post‐communist era: Their historical and political significance
This article examines recent patterns of Romani westward migrations, challenging the notion of a ‘tidal wave’ of Roma migrants entering western Europe. The first part distinguishes migration from nomadism, rejecting the common proposition that Roma are inherently nomadic, and goes on to distinguish the particularities of Romani migrations compared to westward migrations of other groups. The article then looks at the causes of Romani migrations be…
Mixed languages: A Functional-Communicative Approach
It has been suggested that the structural composition of mixed languages and the linguistic processes through which they emerge are to some extent predictable, and that they therefore constitute a language "type" (e.g. Bakker and Mous, 1994b; Bakker and Muysken, 1995). This view is challenged here. Instead, it is argued that the compartmentalisation of structures observed in mixed languages (i.e. the fact that certain structural categories are de…
Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing
Members of a functional category that I tentatively call utterance modifiers are the most vulnerable items to contact-related linguistic change in grammar. Utterance modifiers regulate linguistic-mental processing activities that can be attributed to a grammar of directing. Bilinguals, when faced with the tension of choosing among the systems at their disposal in what is a highly automaticized operation, are tempted to reduce the overt representa…
Multilingualism in a post-industrial city: Policy and practice in Manchester
Manchester (England), one of the first industrial cities, is now home to over 150 languages. Ethnic minority and migrant communities take active steps to maintain heritage languages in commerce and through education. The paper introduces a model for a holistic approach to profiling urban multilingualism that relies on triangulating a variety of quantitative data sets, observations, and ethnographic interviews. We examine how responses to language…
Roma populations and health inequalities: A New Perspective
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of “Roma health and wellbeing” as a focus of attention in European research and in policy and the possible detrimental consequences of action founded on a generic representation of “Roma health.” Design/methodology/approach Based on discussions with and research conducted by scholars who work directly with Roma communities across European regions from a wide range of academic disciplin…
Deixis and deictic oppositions in discourse: Evidence from Romani
Parity of Participation' and the Politics of Needs Interpretation: Engagement with Roma Migrants in Manchester
Service providers in Western welfare states have to engage with an increasingly differentiated citizenry. The arrival of new migrant communities triggers debates, negotiations and struggles over the needs of these communities and how service providers can engage with them. In this paper, we look at these processes of developing local social inclusion policies that target migrant communities through the perspective of Nancy Fraser's 'politics of n…
Urban Multilingualism and the Civic University: A Dynamic, Non-Linear Model of Participatory Research
Drawing on the example of Multilingual Manchester, we show how a university research unit can support work toward a more inclusive society by raising awareness of language diversity and thereby helping to facilitate access to services, raise confidence among disadvantaged groups, sensitise young people to the challenges of diversity, and remove barriers. The setting (Manchester, UK) is one in which globalisation and increased mobility have create…
Attitudes to the language and identity of Romanian Roma migrants in a UK school setting
Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, we discuss teachers’ narratives about the language and identity of Roma pupils and compare them with those of the pupils themselves. We explore the sources of information that shape teachers’ dispositions, category conflation (of Roma with ‘Gypsies/Travellers’) and lack of information on sociolinguistic repertoires. We discuss the risks of targeted, scripted institutional narr…
Romacilikanes—The Romani dialect of Parakalamos
Descriptions of the Romani dialects of Greece have hitherto concentrated on the Vlax varieties, spoken mainly by immigrants who were expelled from Turkey in the early 1920s (cf. Igla 1996, Messing 1987). Hardly any discussion has been devoted to the Balkan dialects spoken by Romani populations with a long history of settlement in Greece. The paper describes the dialect of the Romacel community of Parakalamos, in the Epirus district of Greece—a la…
Actors’ discourses on language supplementary schools: Diaspora practices and emerging ideologies
Drawing on interviews with staff from Language Supplementary Schools (LSS) in Manchester (UK), we discuss the emergence of makeshift ideologies whereby actors seek to legitimise choices and policies of heritage language transmission in the diaspora setting. Actors discuss the use of regional and vernacular varieties, the consideration given to pupils’ multilingual repertoires, and the use of the majority language (English) as ‘scaffold’. Consciou…
Using the school setting to map community languages: A pilot study in Manchester, England
Recording the home languages of schoolchildren has long been acknowledged as a useful way of mapping community multilingualism. However, the need to process large quantities of data on many different languages has meant that in order to assess the vitality of community languages, researchers have had to rely on schoolchildren's self-reported language preference and proficiency. Moreover, large scale data collection among minors poses ethical and …
Mapping the Romani dialects of Romania
This is the first attempt to map specifically the Romani dialects of Romania - the country with the largest Romani-speaking population. The data under consideration derives from fieldwork carried out over the past decade as part of the dialectological documentation of the Manchester Romani Project, based on the Romani Dialectological Questionnaire, first drafted in 2001. Most of the data has been made accessible online via the Romani Morpho-Synta…
Ideologies and identity performance in users’ discourses about Romani-based special languages (‘Sondersprachen’)
Drawing on users' testimonials we discuss how peripatetic populations forge ideologies around their use of group-internal special vocabulary.We identify three recurring themes: The discourse of loss that purports to account for a language history marked by deprivation and anomaly and intertwined with a notion of incompleteness of one's own identity; contemporary negotiation of identity that draws on external reference points to set boundaries tow…
Multilingual repertoire management and illocutionary functions in Yiddish signage in Manchester
Transnational policy and 'authenticity' discourses on Romani language and identity
Romani is a fascinating test case for the role that language plays in the process of identity consolidation in a transnational context. Standardisation is no longer inherently connected to the 'territorialisation' of language. Instead, we witness a bottom-up process in which individuals take ownership of language and negotiate language practices. Status regulation and language planning can be instigated and even implemented by institutions other …
Two Domari legends about the origin of the Doms
The Doms belong to the populations known collectively in the literature as ‘Middle Eastern Gypsies’. Their own term for their group is dōm, in the plural dōme. The Arabs usually call them nawar or, more pejoratively, zuṭṭ. The latter has been in use since medieval times as a collective name for various groups of Indian immigrants to the Middle East, including nomadic musicians, soldiers, and captives (see Grierson 1887); it is often associated wi…
Romani in Contact: The history, structure and sociology of a language
A language of Indic origin heavily infuenced by European idioms for many centuries now, Romani provides an interesting experimental field for students of language contact, linguistic minorities, standardization, and typology. Approaching the language via its ever-surfacing character as a language in contact, the volume gives expression to part of the wide range or research represented in today's field of Romani linguistics. Contributions focus on…
Prozedurale Fusion: Grammatische Interferenzschichten im Romanes
Clause Combining, Ergativity, and Coreferent Deletion in Kurmanji
A distinction is commonly made between morphological or surface ergativity, and syntactic or deep ergativity, based on what Dixon has termed the "pivot" behavior (S/A vs. S/O) of a language. Since marked constructions enable an S/A pivot to function even in some deep ergative languages, deep or syntactic ergativity might be interpreted as gradational, depending on the degree to which ergative morphology interferes with the grammar of clause integ…
Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language
Deixis and deictic oppositions in discourse: Evidence from Romani
Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing
Members of a functional category that I tentatively call utterance modifiers are the most vulnerable items to contact-related linguistic change in grammar. Utterance modifiers regulate linguistic-mental processing activities that can be attributed to a grammar of directing. Bilinguals, when faced with the tension of choosing among the systems at their disposal in what is a highly automaticized operation, are tempted to reduce the overt representa…
Writing Romani: The pragmatics of codification in a stateless language
Romani is a stateless, non-territorial minority language with no written tradition. The present paper offers a survey of recent codification efforts. Codification is regional and decentralized, with only marginal international orientation or institutional commitment. Texts tend to show moderate or elaborate adjustment of the majority language alphabet, with occasional 'soft' neologisms. In a pragmatic corpus analysis, three action-oriented functi…
Fusion and the cognitive basis for bilingual discourse markers
This paper argues for a cognitive motivation behind the nonseparation of the systems of discourse marking available to bilinguals. It produces evidence that bilingual speakers, in an unconscious effort to reduce the mental effort which is necessary to monitor and direct the hearer's responses and reactions to the speaker's utterances, can simplify monitoring -and- directing operations by eliminating the language-specific options available to them…
Two Domari legends about the origin of the Doms
The Doms belong to the populations known collectively in the literature as ‘Middle Eastern Gypsies’. Their own term for their group is dōm, in the plural dōme. The Arabs usually call them nawar or, more pejoratively, zuṭṭ. The latter has been in use since medieval times as a collective name for various groups of Indian immigrants to the Middle East, including nomadic musicians, soldiers, and captives (see Grierson 1887); it is often associated wi…
Romani migrations in the post‐communist era: Their historical and political significance
This article examines recent patterns of Romani westward migrations, challenging the notion of a ‘tidal wave’ of Roma migrants entering western Europe. The first part distinguishes migration from nomadism, rejecting the common proposition that Roma are inherently nomadic, and goes on to distinguish the particularities of Romani migrations compared to westward migrations of other groups. The article then looks at the causes of Romani migrations be…
Mixed languages: A Functional-Communicative Approach
It has been suggested that the structural composition of mixed languages and the linguistic processes through which they emerge are to some extent predictable, and that they therefore constitute a language "type" (e.g. Bakker and Mous, 1994b; Bakker and Muysken, 1995). This view is challenged here. Instead, it is argued that the compartmentalisation of structures observed in mixed languages (i.e. the fact that certain structural categories are de…
Romani: A Linguistic Introduction
Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin which is spoken in Europe by the people known as 'Gypsies' (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers, and their language has attracted increasing interest both from scholars and from policy-makers in governments and other organizations during the past ten years. This 2002 book is the first comprehensive overview in English of Romani. It provides a historical lingu…
The Mixed Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances
Mixed Languages are speech varieties that arise in bilingual settings, often as markers of ethnic separateness. They combine structures inherited from different parent languages, often resulting in odd and unique splits that present a challenge to theories of contact-induced change as well as genetic classification. This collection of articles is devoted to the theoretical and empirical controversies that surround the study of Mixed Languages. Is…
Romacilikanes—The Romani dialect of Parakalamos
Descriptions of the Romani dialects of Greece have hitherto concentrated on the Vlax varieties, spoken mainly by immigrants who were expelled from Turkey in the early 1920s (cf. Igla 1996, Messing 1987). Hardly any discussion has been devoted to the Balkan dialects spoken by Romani populations with a long history of settlement in Greece. The paper describes the dialect of the Romacel community of Parakalamos, in the Epirus district of Greece—a la…
Linguistic Areas
The contributors to this collection address issues of definition and theory of linguistic areas, analyze the process of convergence, and introduce methods to assess the impact of language contact acro
Romani: A Linguistic Introduction
Investigating the mechanisms of pattern replication in language convergence
The replication of concrete formal-structural material (morpho-phonological forms with attached meanings) from one language in another is universally understood to instantiate grammatical and lexical ‘borrowing’ (we follow mainstream usage here and attach no value judgement to the word ‘borrowing’ itself, which is obviously just a metaphor). More controversial is the interpretation of contact-induced structural change that does not involve such r…
Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
Language Contact
Most societies in today's world are multilingual. 'Language contact' occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence each other. This book is an introduction to the subject, covering individual and societal multilingualism, the acquisition of two or more languages from birth, second language acquisition in adulthood, language change, linguistic typology, language processing and the structure of the language facu…
Romani in Britain: The Afterlife of a Language
Contact Languages: A Comprehensive Guide
Mapping the Romani dialects of Romania
This is the first attempt to map specifically the Romani dialects of Romania - the country with the largest Romani-speaking population. The data under consideration derives from fieldwork carried out over the past decade as part of the dialectological documentation of the Manchester Romani Project, based on the Romani Dialectological Questionnaire, first drafted in 2001. Most of the data has been made accessible online via the Romani Morpho-Synta…
Obituary: Gilad Margalit, 1959-2014
Gilad Margalit, Professor of General History at Haifa University, died on 23 July 2014 in his home after a battle against a brain tumour. He was 54 years old. Margalit grew up in Haifa and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1996 working under the supervision of Professors Moshe Zimmermann and Dan Diner. Margalit's research on policies toward Gypsies in post-war Germany broke new ground both in the …
Multilingualism in a post-industrial city: Policy and practice in Manchester
Manchester (England), one of the first industrial cities, is now home to over 150 languages. Ethnic minority and migrant communities take active steps to maintain heritage languages in commerce and through education. The paper introduces a model for a holistic approach to profiling urban multilingualism that relies on triangulating a variety of quantitative data sets, observations, and ethnographic interviews. We examine how responses to language…
Transnational policy and 'authenticity' discourses on Romani language and identity
Romani is a fascinating test case for the role that language plays in the process of identity consolidation in a transnational context. Standardisation is no longer inherently connected to the 'territorialisation' of language. Instead, we witness a bottom-up process in which individuals take ownership of language and negotiate language practices. Status regulation and language planning can be instigated and even implemented by institutions other …
Linguistics (33 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Romani and Gypsy Studies (19 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · History (14 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Law (10 works)