The author examines pragmatic change and continuity in the way Romanian migrants position themselves with respect to their mother tongue. The main changes are due to the fact that (1) Romanian language is absent from the linguistic landscape of the country where migrants work; (2) it is useless for communicating in the new context; (3) as such, its usage becomes rarefied and (4) this leads to affective vulnerability even with respect to situations of normal use. On the other hand, (5) linguistic sharing and proximity in Romania are retroactively understood in their uniqueness; (6) Romanian instruments the learning of the target language through grammars and dictionaries, thus taking over an important metalinguistic function; (6) phone conversations and email allow the migrants to maintain their Romanian conversational histories, thus feeding pragmatic continuity.
Key words:
language contact, linguistic landscape, metalinguistic function, phatic function, pragmatics
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