Refugees without Assistance: English-Language Attainment and Economic Outcomes in the Early Twentieth Century

The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs that provide temporary assistance. Scholars have highlighted the success of refugee groups to show the positive impact of governmental programs on assimilation and integration. In the past, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment and economic outcomes of migrants who arrived before 1940. Using detailed measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved higher levels of English proficiency than did economic migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research of immigrant language acquisition, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency, and on studies of refugees, which typically assign refugee status based on country-of-birth alone. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees, being unable to immediately return to their origin country, may have had greater incentive to learn or be exposed to English, which increased their linguistic attainment. Our results provide an optimistic historical precedent for the incorporation of refugees into American society.

Immigrant Language Maintenance and Shift in the Gujarati, Dutch and Samoan Communities of Wellington

<p>This thesis makes a contribution to the study of language maintenance and shift among New Zealand ethnic minority communities; it explores reasons for different rates of shift and different outcomes in relation to language maintenance in different communities; and the results are related to wide-ranging issues of New Zealand language policy. Research was undertaken in three minority immigrant groups in Wellington. The Gujarati community in Wellington is a major part of the Indian community totalling approximately 6,000 people at the time of the research; the Samoan community consisted of approximately 16,000 people, and the Dutch of 3,000. 141 members of the Gujarati community responded to questionnaires and interviews about themselves and their children, providing information on patterns of reported language proficiency, language use and attitudes to language maintenance from a total of 327 people. 184 Dutch respondents replied to a postal questionnaire about their own and their children's language knowledge, language usage patterns and attitudes to language maintenance, providing data on 412 people. 93 Samoan respondents filled out questionnaires and responded to interviews about themselves and their 133 children. Thus Information on a total of 965 New Zealanders belonging to minority immigrant communities was obtained. The data collected on patterns of language maintenance and shift is examined in the light of a wide range of language policy issues. The history of language and identity politics, minority immigration in New Zealand, and the immigration histories of the three groups are examined in detail, and the history of language and policy formation in New Zealand, is outlined and evaluated. The research focuses on the process of immigrant language maintenance and shift in the family and immediate community, and also investigates the role of language maintenance education in these processes. Information about language use processes in childhood and adulthood is presented. The Graded Intergeneration Disruption Stages scale, proposed by Joshua Fishman is tested against the information gathered on the three communities and found to be a useful heuristic device. The results of the research show that while processes of language maintenance and shift occur in all three communities, these processes take very different forms in each community, move at different speeds and. to date, have had very different outcomes. The reasons for the differences between the communities in these respects are examined in some detail. Finally, on the basis of the evidence provided by the research, language policy proposals are presented supporting the provision of government services in minority immigrant languages and indicating the advantages of state support for language maintenance education.</p>

Immigrant Language Maintenance and Shift in the Gujarati, Dutch and Samoan Communities of Wellington

<p>This thesis makes a contribution to the study of language maintenance and shift among New Zealand ethnic minority communities; it explores reasons for different rates of shift and different outcomes in relation to language maintenance in different communities; and the results are related to wide-ranging issues of New Zealand language policy. Research was undertaken in three minority immigrant groups in Wellington. The Gujarati community in Wellington is a major part of the Indian community totalling approximately 6,000 people at the time of the research; the Samoan community consisted of approximately 16,000 people, and the Dutch of 3,000. 141 members of the Gujarati community responded to questionnaires and interviews about themselves and their children, providing information on patterns of reported language proficiency, language use and attitudes to language maintenance from a total of 327 people. 184 Dutch respondents replied to a postal questionnaire about their own and their children's language knowledge, language usage patterns and attitudes to language maintenance, providing data on 412 people. 93 Samoan respondents filled out questionnaires and responded to interviews about themselves and their 133 children. Thus Information on a total of 965 New Zealanders belonging to minority immigrant communities was obtained. The data collected on patterns of language maintenance and shift is examined in the light of a wide range of language policy issues. The history of language and identity politics, minority immigration in New Zealand, and the immigration histories of the three groups are examined in detail, and the history of language and policy formation in New Zealand, is outlined and evaluated. The research focuses on the process of immigrant language maintenance and shift in the family and immediate community, and also investigates the role of language maintenance education in these processes. Information about language use processes in childhood and adulthood is presented. The Graded Intergeneration Disruption Stages scale, proposed by Joshua Fishman is tested against the information gathered on the three communities and found to be a useful heuristic device. The results of the research show that while processes of language maintenance and shift occur in all three communities, these processes take very different forms in each community, move at different speeds and. to date, have had very different outcomes. The reasons for the differences between the communities in these respects are examined in some detail. Finally, on the basis of the evidence provided by the research, language policy proposals are presented supporting the provision of government services in minority immigrant languages and indicating the advantages of state support for language maintenance education.</p>

Talking American in the Midwest: Linguistic Diversity and Authenticity in the Twentieth-Century United States

During the early twentieth century – when the United States was receiving an influx of non-English-speaking immigrants, and “standardization” was a dominant, yet polarizing, concept – having a single national language that unified Americans became a controversial topic in public discourse. In The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, Ruth Suckow, like many authors at the time, used immigrant language as a foil for midwestern speech to demonstrate its “standard” Americanness. But, as this essay will show, by using other regional American dialects in a similar manner, she questioned how “Americanness” was being understood and recognized during this period in the United States.

Sociolets, Socioaffective Filters and Social Transference: Contextual Considerations For Urban, Immigrant, Language Learners

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THE LINGUISTIC ADAPTION IN AN IMMIGRANT LANGUAGE SETTING IN MAKASSAR, INDONESIA

Historically, the immigrant has been living and interacting with Makassar people and others in Makassar since 2014 until today. These interactions result unique way of how these immigrant use language to communicate. This article mainly aimed to describe how was the language used among immigrant in Makassar. The data were collected through observation by recording the conversation and interviewing some of the participants to confirm how and why they used certain dialect during the conversation. These interactions by using some language variation or dialects can be called a language contact situation. In their early presence that immigrant used English (Eng) and Indonesia language (IL) formally to communicate with IOM staff, UNHCR staff, among immigrant, and out of them, but when they have access to live for a while in Makassar, they interact with Makassar people freely and they use various languages such as Makassar language (ML), Indonesian language by Makassar Malay language (MML) as the trend of Makassar dialect, or sometimes used English as their language code. MML was mostly used compared to other language by those immigrants in some public area in Makassar. The using of MML by immigrant was a linguistic adaptation to the target language.

New Dialect Formation Through Language Contact

The situation of sustained contact between Spanish and English in Miami during the past half century provides a rare opportunity to study contact-induced language change in an ecological context in which speakers of the immigrant language (i.e., Spanish) have become the numerical majority. The study reported here is designed to track the phonetic and prosodic influences of Spanish on the variety of English emerging among second-generation Miami-born Latinx speakers of various national origin backgrounds by examining a suite of variables shown in prior studies to exhibit Spanish substrate influence in other regional contexts. We examine two kinds of phonetic variables in the English spoken by 20 second-generation Latinx and 5 Anglo white speakers: (1) prosodic rhythm and (2) vowel quality. Prosodic rhythm was quantified using Low and Grabe’s Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI); results show that Miami-born Latinx speakers are significantly more syllable-timed in casual speech than Miami-born Anglo white speakers. Significant vocalic differences were also observed, with Latinx speakers producing lower and more backed tokens of [æ] in prenasal and nonprenasal positions and more backed tokens of [u].

Differential invisibilization and its aftermath : Menominee and German in Wisconsin*

Not only can monolingual histories mask multilingual practices, but writing languages out of history happens very differently even in the same time and place. We examine two cases in one historical setting, an Indigenous language and an immigrant language in Wisconsin (U.S.), Menominee and German. The widespread view of the United States today as an English monolingual state reflects an ongoing process of writing other languages out of history, or invisibilization. Menominee and German present sharply contrasting cases of this process and reactions to it from the late 19th century to the present. German, once widely taught, written and read in a standard variety, has lost that status as one piece of a broader political struggle and exists today basically as a ‘post-vernacular’ language. In contrast, Menominee faced ongoing, violent efforts to extirpate it, but is being revitalized by a new generation of speakers today.