The Role of the Newspaper Parekordzagani Tzain and its Related Institutions in the Preservation of Language and Identity in the Armenian Community of Plovdiv

Abstract

This paper describes the linguistic and identity challenges faced by the members of the Armenian diaspora of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in relation to what can be viewed as an irreducible multicultural context. Through the consideration of the community’s main cultural institutions embodied by the AGBU organization, the related press organ Parekordzagani Tzain and publishing house Armen Tur, I highlight the Armenian diaspora’s ability to combine different resources from a transnational perspective, while keeping alive a fixed sense of collective identity. In such a process, I show how language reveals itself as the main chore of the community’s value systems, embracing different domains of the diaspora's social and cultural life.