Week 9
Sociolinguistics
Language shift often indicates the influence of political
factors and economic factors, such as the need for
work. People may shift both location and language for
this reason. Over the last couple of centuries, many
speakers of Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, for
instance, have shifted to England, and consequently to
English, primarily in order to get work. They need
English both for their job success and for their social
well-being – to make friends.
Language Shift in Migrant Majorities
But we find the outcome is the same when it is the
majority group who do the physical moving.
Language shift because of migrant majorities refers to a situation
where the local or original population gradually changes its main
language due to the large presence of migrants who form the
majority in a community or region.
When colonial powers invade other countries, their languages
often become dominant. Countries such as Portugal, Spain,
France and Britain have generally imposed their languages along
with their rule.
In this context, English has been described as a ‘killer
language’. Where one group abrogates political power
and imposes its language along with its institutions –
government administration, law courts, education,
religion – it is likely that minority groups will find
themselves under increasing pressure to adopt the
language of the dominant group.
The language of the powerful ruling group is associated with
high status, prestige and social success.
Example 4 – p.57
Tamati lives in Wanganui, a large New Zealand town. He is 10
years old, and he speaks and understands only English,
though he knows a few Maori phrases. None of his mates
know any Maori either. His grandfather speaks Maori,
however. Whenever there is a big gathering, such as a funeral
or an important tribal meeting, his grandfather is one of the
best speakers. Tamati’s mother and father understand Maori,
but they are not fluent speakers. They can manage a short
simple conversation, but that’s about it. Tamati’s little sister,
Miriama, has just started at a pre-school where Maori is used,
so he thinks maybe he’ll learn a bit from her.
Most Aboriginal people in Australia, and many American Indian
people in the USA, have similarly lost their languages over four
or five generations of colonial rule. The indigenous people were
swamped by English, the language of the dominant group, and
their numbers were decimated by warfare and disease.
The result of colonial economic and political control was more or less
complete eradication of the many indigenous languages. Over time
the communities shifted to the coloniser’s language, English, and their
own languages died out.
When language shift occurs, it is almost always shift towards the
language of the dominant powerful group. A dominant group has
little incentive to adopt the language of a minority. The dominant
language is associated with status, prestige and social success. It is
used in the ‘glamour’ contexts in the wider society – for formal
speeches on ceremonial occasions, by news readers on television
and radio, and by those whom young people admire – pop stars,
fashion models, and DJs (disc jockeys). It is scarcely surprising that
many young minority group speakers should see its advantages and
abandon their own language.
Summary, A Term & An Extra Example
▪ When colonial powers invade other countries, the language
of the colonizers becomes dominant.
• Countries like England, France, Spain & Portugal imposed
their languages along with their rules.
▪ The majority language displaced the indigenous or
aboriginal languages in North and South America and in
Australia. Many of these aboriginal languages have
eventually died. This is often referred to as “Linguicide”,
and is known to be, a ‘killer language’.
▪ The dominant language of the powerful ruling group is
associated with high status, prestige, and social success.
Example: Frenchification of Algeria
Algeria was a French colony (1830-1956)
During the colonial period, about one million French native
speakers lived in Algeria and developed a distinctive dialect. In
1963, of the 1,300,000 literate people in Algeria, 1 million read
French. Of the total population, 6 million spoke French.
Domains of Language Use:
Although Arabic is the official language in Algeria, French is
widely used in government, culture, media (newspapers) and
education and can be regarded as being a co-official language of
Algeria.
French continues to be the dominant language in business and
professional circles. Scientific and business university courses
are still taught in French. Algeria is the second largest
Francophone country in the world in terms of speakers: 18
million Algerians can write and read French, which is 50% of the
population.
The attitude of Algerians towards the French language is a
complex.
Islamists are supportive of monolingual Arabic while
"modernists” and secular members of the Algerian elite and the
general population, favor bilingualism in Arabic and French
Language Death
It is generally true that when all the people who speak a
language die, the language dies with them.
• Manx has now completely died out in the Isle of Man – the
last native speaker, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974.
• Despite recent attempts to revive it, most people agree that
Cornish effectively disappeared from Cornwall in the
eighteenth century when Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole died
in 1777.
Less than half of the 250–300 Aboriginal languages spoken in
Australia when the Europeans arrived have survived, and fewer
than two dozen are being actively passed on to younger
generations. Many disappeared as a direct result of the massacre
of the Aboriginal people, or their death from diseases introduced
by Europeans. In Tasmania, for instance, the whole indigenous
population of between 3000 and 4000 people was exterminated
within seventy-five years. Their languages died with them. These
are cases of language death rather than language shift. These
languages are no longer spoken anywhere.
Language Loss
A community, such as the Turkish community in Britain, may
shift to English voluntarily over a couple of generations. This
involves the loss of the language for the individuals concerned,
and even for the community in Britain. But Turkish is not under
threat of disappearing because of this shift. It will continue to
thrive in Turkey.
When a language dies gradually, as opposed to all its speakers
being wiped out by a massacre or epidemic, the process is similar
to that of language shift. The functions of the language are taken
over in one domain after another by another language. As the
domains in which speakers use the language shrink, the speakers
of the dying language become gradually less proficient in it.
Factors contributing to language shift
Economic, social and political shift
What factors lead a community to shift from using one language
to using another? Initially, the most obvious factor is that the
community sees an important reason for learning the second
language. The reasons are often economic, but they may also be
political – as in the case of Israel. Obtaining work is the most
obvious economic reason for learning another language. In
English-dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in
order to get good jobs. This results in bilingualism. Bilingualism is
always a necessary precursor of language shift, although, as
stable diglossic communities demonstrate, it does not always
result in shift.
(social Reasons)
The second important factor, then, seems to be that the community sees
no reason to take active steps to maintain their ethnic language. They
may not see it as offering any advantages to their children, for example, or
they may not realise that it is in any danger of disappearing. Without active
language maintenance, shift is almost inevitable in many contexts. For
example, where a migrant minority group moves to a predominantly
monolingual society dominated by one majority group language in all the
major institutional domains – school, TV, radio, newspapers, government
administration, courts, work – language shift will be unavoidable unless the
community takes active steps to prevent it.
At first it appears very important to learn the majority language in order to achieve
social and economic success. The minority language seems safe because ‘we all speak
it’. Yet, without conscious maintenance it can and usually does disappear in as few as
three generations.
(Summary)
The social and economic goals of individuals in a community are very
important in accounting for the speed of shift. Rapid shift occurs when people
are anxious to ‘get on’ in a society where knowledge of the second language is
a prerequisite for success.