Metaphors of the Finnish Roma in Finnish and Romani

This paper surveys the reservoir of metaphors used by Finnish Roma in both Finnish and Romani. The Finnish lects spoken by Roma differ from the mainstream usage of Finnish but are subject to standardization. Finnish Romani is largely moribund. In my paper, emphasis will be laid on the socio-cultural grounding of the metaphors. I will compare Roma metaphors with ones used by the main population to determine, whether there are cross-cultural differences in the typology of motivation of the metaphors: are Roma metaphors based on different embodiment of conceptions or otherwise different grounding than the metaphors used by the main population? I will furthermore study the similarities and translatability between metaphors in Finnish and in Romani. Intergenerational variation will be considered in order to compare the metaphor competence of older and younger Roma generations in relationship to their (self-evaluated) proficiency in Romani.