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Leah Davcheva & Richard Fay

11th IALIC International Conference

Intercultural Dialogue: Current Challenges/Future Directions

(1) The research 1. the researched context

the complex multilingual / intercultural worlds of: ---- C20th and C21st Bulgaria---- the ‘endangered’ Ladino-speaking worlds of the Sephardim

the research context storytellers

fieldwork in Bulgaria and desk work also in Manchester

the researcher(s) context

intercultural and multilingual collaboration(s)

the research text

representation for different audiences, in different languages

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The researched context: Bulgarian intercultural and multilingual complexities […] people of the most varied backgrounds lived there

[Ruschuk], on any one day you could hear seven or eight languages. Aside from the Bulgarians, who often came from the countryside, there were many Turks, who lived in their own neighbourhood, and next to it was the neigbourhood of the Sephardim, the Spanish Jews – our neighbourhood. There were Greeks, Albanians, Armenians, Gypsies. From the opposite side of the Danube came Rumanians, there were also Russians here and there. [...] To each other, my parents spoke German, which I was not allowed to understand. To us children and to all relatives and friends, they spoke Ladino. That was the true vernacular, albeit an ancient Spanish, I often heard it later on and I've never forgotten it. The peasant girls at home knew only Bulgarian, and I must have learned it with them. All events of those first years were in Ladino or Bulgarian. (Elias Canetti, 1979: 6-10)

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The researched context: Ladino

Me llamo Reina Lidji y este es el nombre de mi vava que se llamava tambien Reina. Ella no sabia el bulgaro y por eso me hizo ambezar le djudeo-español par a poder avlar con mi. Me gusta muncho esta lingva por que grasias a ella pude conocer muncha gente de America Latina y de España, nuestra patria de antes quientientos años.

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The research context: storytellers & research processes

the Sephardimmiddle-aged and elderly Sephardic Jews – interviewed

in Bulgaria

fieldwork in Bulgaria - largely in Bulgariandata transcription and restorying – Bulgarian and

Englishdata analysis – Bulgarian and Englishresearcher discussions - in Englishresearch dissemination – in Bulgarian and English (and

Spanish?)5

The researcher context

Leah – Bulgarian, Sephardic, Ladino-memories from childhood, largely field-based, ‘insider’, experience of doing research multilingually

Richard – non-Bulgarian, non-Jewish, no Ladino memories, ‘outsider’, largely desk-based research experience

Shared – intercultural expertise, narrative research experience, Balkan interests (incl. history, music, culture, politics), and a history of collaborative research

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(2) Some methodological aspectsNarrative methodology (involving e.g. restorying)Collaborative , intercultural (involving differing

researchers)Reflexive (reciprocal reflexivity managed through

research stories)Multilingual – research about one language (Ladino),

through stories told largely in another (Bulgarian) as analysed and (re)presented in a third (English)

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(3) The data

14 interview transcriptions in Bulgarian14 stories restoried in Bulgarianthen translated into English

Corpus of portraits and photographs

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(4) Data analysis processto allow these voices to be heard [content-

holistic]to analyse them [content-categorical]‘Language death’ ….….. identity and intercultural dialogue

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Identity performanceNarrative Performance

narratives as meaning-making ‘performances’ situated in time, purpose, and audience

“Culture as a verb” (Street, 1993) gender and identity also as verbs –(e.g. Johnson, 1997)

Identity-work / identity performance “every social occasion is an opportunity for identity work” (Brittan, 1989:36) performativity (Butler, 1990) – gender / identity is not something we have but something we do (through language/narration)

Narratives as identity-work/performance (e.g. Block, 2006) narrative occasions in which the time, purpose, and audience ‘anchors’ help situate that identity-work/performance 10

Five zones of identity performancethe (intra-)personal --- a zone of internal dialogue;the domestic --- a zone for the family (especially relevant

during childhood, upbringing etc);the local --- a zone for the Sephardic community in Bulgaria;the diasporic --- a zone for the wider Sephardic Jewish

community (including mediated modes of communication through literature, newspapers, and journals); and

the international --- the international community of Spanish-users.

As set against the historically-, politically-, culturally-, and societally- changing Bulgarian Sephardic Jewish Ladino-oriented context(s)

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Sites of / opportunities for intercultural dialogue

the researched context the research context the researcher(s) context the research text

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Ladino and intercultural dialogueThis Ladino case study exemplifies the way in which we, as interculturalists, recognise and value the ever-changing cultural complexity of individuals, contexts, and eras. Whenever we do so, a vast vista of identity–performance opens up before us in which language and identity constantly interact. Such identity-performance is both individualised and contextualised. Its dynamics reflect and contribute to the situations in which the individuals are located. For example, whilst our storytellers’ Ladino informed identity-performance is now quite muted in Bulgaria, it opens up self-affirming possibilities in the international sphere.

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Contact

leah.davcheva@gmail.com richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk

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