Arcin Celikesmer

Murmurs of a split tongue: Approaching spectral linguistics through the languages and literatures of partitioned Cyprus

The languages of Cyprus contain linguistic remnants that can reveal histories of pre-partitional unity and post-colonial division. Examining these remnants allows me to demonstrate how language and socio-political identifications are interlinked within Cyprus following its partition between the Greek-speaking (GsC) and Turkish-speaking Cypriots (TsC) in 1974.

Remnants of pre-partitional unity of the two Cypriot communities are displayed in sociological/literary discourses as shared words that form a repressed, hybrid language variety Mehmet Yashin identifies as “Kypriaka” (Yashin 2018). This shared Cypriot lexicon emphasises the island’s cosmopolitan nature, while rejecting the monolinguistic colonial assertions of the island’s “Step-Mothertongues”, Turkish and Greek (Yashin 2000). Moreover, the remnants of post-colonial division appear as negative language attitudes towards the marginalised Cypriot dialects, because of the increased use of ‘Mainland’ Greek and Turkish varieties in social and literary contexts. Yashin’s oeuvre explicitly points out the post-partitional decline of Cypriot Turkish, alongside Turkish-Greek hybrid forms such as Karamanlica/Karamanlidiki, being referred to as ‘the language of the dead’.

After studying the absence/presence of syntactic elements due to intense linguistic contact and social markedness within Cypriot Turkish (Celikesmer, forthcoming), I consider the frameworks of “hauntology of language” (Joseph 2018) and Deumert’s “linguistic spectrality” (2022) to study these remnants. A focus on the motifs of absent-presence and ghostliness within Cypriot languages combines both arguments. By considering how colonially-oppressed varieties attain ghostly reputations within sociolinguistic/literary contexts, and how these can be used for identity-creation purposes (Deumert 2022; Joseph 2018), I maintain two strands of analysis. Firstly, I explore how TsC/GsC poets evoke the ghosts of pre-partition Cyprus through a hybridised language to create a postcolonial Cypriot identity. Secondly, I observe how ‘languages of the dead’ such as Karamanlidiki and the Cypriot dialects are used and perceived in post-1974 Cypriot literatures, representing the national and post-national identifications within the partitioned island.

References

Celikesmer, A. (forthcoming). “Yedin Annem?” (“Have You Eaten My Mother?”): On the Absence/Presence of the Interrogative Polarity Particle in Cypriot Turkish. Journal of Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain.

Deumert, A. (2022). The Sound of Absent-Presence: Towards Formulating a Sociolinguistics of the Spectre. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 45, 135–153. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21039.deu.

Gordon, A. F. (2008). Ghostly Matters: haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Joseph, J. E. (2018). The Hauntology of Language and Identity. In: Y. Mendel (Ed.), Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman (p. 0). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421539.003.0002

Papadakis, Y. (2005). Echoes from the Dead Zone: across the Cyprus Divide. London: Bloomsbury.

Yashin (Yaşın), M. (2007). Sınırdışı Saatler [The Deported Hours] (2nd ed). Istanbul: Everest Publishing.

Yashin (Yaşın), Mehmet. (2014). Dokuz şiir Kitabı: Toplu şiirler (1975- 2013) [Nine Poetry Collections: Collected Poems (1975-2013)]. Yapı Kredi Yayınları.

Yashin (Yaşın), M. (2018). Edebi Mekanlar Diller, ve Kültürler Arasında Yazmak [Writing From a Mediterranean Island: Between Languages and Literary Space]. In: Kozmopoetika (3rd ed., pp. 11-42). Yitik Ülke Yayınları.