LING 204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Speech Community, Yiddishkeit, Sociolinguistics
Document Summary
Language maintenance- how languages survive and the actions people and groups take to make that happen. Ethnolinguistic vitality (ev)- how likely a language is to survive in a particular place. Can be affected by local events and contexts. For example, a new employer who requires a particular language. People who speak a language with a low perceived ev are more likely to shift. Many factors can influence language retention: (cid:1) (cid:1) stuff (cid:1) Power and prestige- what"s the language of important stuff or cool. Demography- size of group, dispersion of speakers, marrying out, new speakers arriving? (cid:1) How much do people want to fit in? (cid:1) Language shift- when speakers (or communities) move from one language to another. Immigrants typically shift in two to four generations. Language death- when a language has no more speakers. A common prediction is that half of the world"s languages will die during this century, especially the indigenous languages of the americans and australia. (cid:1)
