Ergin Öpengin & Geoffrey Haig (Eds.). 2014. Special Issue: Kurdish Linguistics. Kurdish Studies 2 (2).
This special issue of Kurdish Studies is dedicated to studies of the Kurdish language, the oldest branch of Kurdish studies, and the first to find a degree of academic institutionalisation. Compared to other major Middle Eastern languages, Kurdish has received relatively little serious investigation, but there is a gradually growing corpus of empirical and theoretical research, of which the guest editors give a useful overview in the introduction. Although there is no unambiguous correlation between language and ethnicity, the Kurdish language has been the most important marker of Kurdish identity, and linguistic studies have often been vitally important to identity politics. We find the works of academic linguists quoted approvingly or fiercely contested in polemics concerning Kurdish nationhood, its demarcation from other peoples, and the inclusion of certain groups in that nation or their claims to be different. The most passionately contested issue no doubt concerns the relationship of Zazaki and Kurdish – the guest editors give a careful overview of this politically charged field – but other questions of demarcation and inclusion (Laki, Lori, and of course the various dialects described as Gurani) have also major implications outside linguistics. The contributions in this issue address questions that are less politically contentious, but certainly also of interest to others than linguists alone. We thank our guest editors, Geoffrey Haig and Ergin Öpengin, for putting together an interesting collection of papers and providing an insightful introduction.
This issue is available in Open Access via The Kurdish Studies Archive: https://brill.com/display/title/12754