Language Shift and Language Death: the Narratives of the Ordinary Citizen

Diksi ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwiyani Pratiwi

impacts on the development of the languages used by the community concerned.One of the impacts is language shift. Factors that are conducive to language shiftare varied. One of these factors is language attitude. This article discusses a furtherimpact that language shift itself can in turn cause, i.e., language death, its process,and the efforts made by individuals, social groups, and the government in authorityto maintain the existence of a language, which implies language maintenance.Keywords: language shift, language maintenance


Author(s):  
Nathalie Dajko

This chapter considers the role that French plays for younger generations, people who do not speak the language. Again using perception exercises, this time a map-drawing activity for which participants were asked to discuss variation in English but very often instead invoked or directly described perceived variation in French, the chapter shows above all the strength of the connection of French with Bayou identity: French has become enregistered, intimately tied to the place. The process of language shift leading to language death is likely the catalyst of the process of enregisterment. While English has become the language of everyday life, French retains an important symbolic role: it is the authentic language of the community. The chapter presents evidence supporting the assertion that it is because place has been mapped onto the language that this is so.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Weinreich

AbstractThe paper is devoted to the phenomenon of mother tongue change, which is known as the most common course of language death. The languages under consideration are Domaakí, with ca. 350 speakers in the Nager and Hunza Valleys, and Pashto, as spoken by permanent migrants in ca. 150 households scattered all over the Northern Areas. By analysing and comparing the social environment of both speech communities the author attempts to illustrate the importance of the speakers' attitude towards their own mother tongue in the process of language shift.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (231) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin

Abstract This article draws on sociolinguistic fieldwork among speakers of one of Europe's smallest indigenous language communities, a speaker group which persists after the loss of all of its “traditional speakers” within living memory. The extreme language shift experienced by Manx has not led to loss of the language as a spoken and literary medium due to the efforts of significant numbers of language activists and enthusiasts over several generations, from before the loss of the traditional language community to the present. Their actions have resulted in significant linguistic institutionalisation and a rapidly expanding number of speakers of various abilities, some of whom form a new “speaker community”. It discusses the constructions of linguistic authenticity and alternative models for the revival speaker, showing how core groups of speakers have been bestowed with authenticity by the wider non-speaker population, for whom linguists' interest in language endangerment and language death are not primary concerns. The article shows how speakers appropriate and are accorded forms of authority and legitimacy in the absence of traditional native speakers.


1987 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.D. Fesl

Abstract This paper looks at the history of language policy formulation and implementation in conjunction with social factors influencing attitudes to both Koorie1 people and their languages. It endeavours to trace the process of enforced language shift, with consequent language death, in the social history of Australia. Factors which aid or are hastening language death in the contemporary period are also discussed. Attention is drawn to the rapidity with which language death has occurred and will continue to occur if measures are not taken to curb the current trends.


1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas D. Tsitsipis

ABSTRACTLiterature on language death offers abundant information on the grammatical, phonological, lexical, and sociolinguistic processes that a dying speech form can undergo. However, work remains to be done in the area of narrative skills and performance. This article examines the creative manipulation of certain narrative devices, including bilingual lexical resources from modern Greek and Tosk Albanian in stories offered by a residual group of fluent Albanian speakers in Greece. In a community, which is highly variable from the point of view of the allocation of its Arvanítika (Albanian) linguistic and sociolinguistic skills to various population segments, fluent speakers manage to achieve a significant performance breakthrough by foregrounding and evaluating information important for their attitude building and vital to their social existence. Narrative performances become ways of relating historical events and past experiences in present-day life. The article makes the point that in studies of language death a more intensive use of the ethnography of speaking paradigm can be of great value for the detection of sensitive areas of speech behavior and change. (Narrative performance, language death, ethnography of speaking, Balkan sociolinguistics, Tosk Albanian, Greek)


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