Paper short abstract:

Through the ethnography of the revival of Griko, a language of Greek origins used in Italy, I highlight the language of kinship through which the Hellenic cultural heritage is reclaimed as expression of global belonging, shaping relationships between people and communities in Greece and Southern Italy

Paper long abstract:

After the general decline of interest in kinship studies, the role of kinship structure to extend itself over international boundaries has been highlighted in the context of Greek diasporic communities (Voutira 2011, Nitsiakos 2010). Based on my ethnography of the revival of Griko, a language of Greek origins used in the Southern Italian province of Lecce, this paper examines the potential and limits of the language of kinship between Greeks and Italian Griko-speakers, who do not belong to the historical Greek categories of diaspora and "lost homeland". In particular I draw attention to its dual articulation - linguistic kinship and kinship as language - in the context of Greek tourism in the hellenophonic villages and of collaborations between cultural associations on both shores; this is implemented by the analysis of Greek newspapers' articles dealing with Griko. My data show how despite the limited mutual intelligibility between Greek and Griko, their deep linguistic kinship is selectively highlighted and iconically projected onto the speakers, becoming the 'proof' of historically deep social relations. I highlight therefore the resort of kinship related terms in the dominant Greek discourse to explore the ways in which kinship remains powerful, beyond the Western biologizing assumption of the term itself (Sutton 1997: 429): kinship becomes indeed the very language through which the Hellenic cultural heritage is reclaimed as an idiom of global belonging. The legacy of kinship studies remains therefore central in understanding how contemporary relationships between persons, communities and places in Greece and Southern Italy are shaped.