Between East and West: English as the Language of Escape in Communist Romania

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Published: Jun 15, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2018-1-0118
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communism the role of English English teaching rock music translation

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Daniela Doboș
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania

Abstract

At the start of the 21st century, the status of English is as controversial as ever, given the current linguistic situation of widespread linguistic loss and the emergence of English as a preeminent language - a world language, an international language, a global language or a lingua franca in almost all settings (Graddol, 1997, 2006; Seidlhofer, Crystal), i.e. a much (over)-used vehicular language. It can easily be argued that no other language ever has been as hotly debated as English, which I would call a “commodity”. To the list of qualifiers that have been assigned to English I would add “escape”, which I would argue is the role English assumed behind the Iron Curtain. Based on my own experience as a teenager in communist Romania, as well as evidence from various memoirs published following the collapse of the regime in 1989, the paper argues that, more than just a symbol of freedom, in communist Romania, the role of English was clearly that of escape from the ideological pressures and widespread fear, as well as the degraded and degrading everyday reality.

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Doboș, D. “Between East and West: English As the Language of Escape in Communist Romania”. Linguaculture, vol. 9, no. 1, June 2018, pp. 127-42, doi:10.47743/lincu-2018-1-0118.
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Vol. 9 No. 1 (2018)
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Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Daniela Doboș, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania

Daniela Doboş is an associate professor in the Department of English at the Faculty of Letters, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania. Her research interests are English and Romanian grammar and linguistics, specialized translation and cultural studies. She has published extensively in various journals and in various collections of essays. Among her latest articles are “Vulgar Slang in English and Romanian. A Few Notes on Romanian Hip Hop Lyrics Translated into English” in Argotica No 1(3)/2014 and “The West Going East: Archaic Romania in Western Authors’ Travel Writings of the Late Twentieth Century” in Views of the East. Travel and Intercultural Communication in Europe, Alexandru Ioan Cuza Publishing House, 2016. She is also the author of two books on English linguistics.

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