Pastoral Worlds and Cultural Identity in Northern Albania through Language Memory and Social Practice

Abstract This study examines the pastoral lexicon of northern Albania as a socially embedded system through which cultural identity, collective memory, and environmental ethics are articulated and sustained. Drawing on an ethnolinguistic corpus derived from Gjovalin Shkurtaj’s lexicographic documentation of the Malësia e Madhe region, the research explores how language mediates relationships among landscape, livelihood, and social organization. Rather than treating pastoral vocabulary as a purely technical register, the study approaches it as a living archive in which lexical items encode moral values, customary law, and patterns of coexistence among humans, livestock, and the mountain environment. Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, the analysis focuses on lexical and phraseological units related to spatial orientation, mobility, herding practices, ritual temporality, and animal symbolism within their cultural contexts. The findings indicate that pastoral language reflects a collective worldview shaped by seasonal migration, communal governance of resources, and reciprocal human–nature relations. Expressions associated with grazing rights, shelters, livestock groupings, ritual departures, and euphemistic naming practices illustrate how social cohesion and ethical norms are linguistically constructed and transmitted across generations. By integrating linguistic evidence with anthropological and ecological perspectives, the study situates Albanian pastoral culture within broader European and Mediterranean traditions of mobile livelihoods. It argues that the preservation of pastoral vocabulary is not merely a matter of linguistic heritage but a crucial component of cultural continuity, identity formation, and sustainable relationships with the environment.