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On Not Knowing Greek While Being Greek: The Language of Unilateral Intercountry Adoption
Abstract
The language skills and struggles of adopted people remain hidden to researchers. The post-WWII intercountry adoption movement, which affected marginalized children, reveals language-related data and incidents that present the adopted children and later adults as real, embodied individuals. Archival research combined with oral testimonies can shed light on the adoptees' acquisition of the language of the country of destination and on the challenges associated with this steep learning process. Language loss and language learning prove to be important parts of the adoption stories of individuals and families and of the collective, postwar history of mass intercountry adoption from “poor” countries of origin to “prosperous” Western “receiving” countries. This chapter draws attention to the undertheorized area of research on language loss and language acquisition among the adoptees from postwar Greece and to the sensitive psychological and sociolegal issues embedded in these processes.
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