DOCSLIB.ORG

Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Reversing Language Shift, Revisited: a 21St Century Perspective

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Reversing Language Shift, Revisited: a 21St Century Perspective MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 116 Series Editor: John Edwards Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Reversing Language Shift, Revisited: A 21st Century Perspective Edited by Joshua A. Fishman MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Reversing Language Shift Revisited: A 21st Century Perspective/Edited by Joshua A. Fishman. Multilingual Matters: 116 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language attrition. I. Fishman, Joshua A. II. Multilingual Matters (Series): 116 P40.5.L28 C36 2000 306.4’4–dc21 00-024283 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-493-8 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-492-X (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: P.O. Box 586, Artarmon, NSW, Australia. Copyright © 2001 Joshua A. Fishman and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Index compiled by Meg Davies (Society of Indexers). Typeset by Archetype-IT Ltd (http://www.archetype-it.com). Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd. In memory of Charles A. Ferguson 1921–1998 thanks to whom sociolinguistics became both an intellectual and a moral quest Contents Contributors . vii Preface . xii 1 Why is it so Hard to Save a Threatened Language? J.A. Fishman . 1 The Americas 2 Reversing Navajo Language Shift, Revisited T. Lee and D. McLaughlin . 23 3 How Threatened is the Spanish of New York Puerto Ricans? O. García, J.L. Morín and K. Rivera . 44 4 A Decade in the Life of a Two-in-One Language J.A. Fishman. 74 5 Reversing Language Shift in Quebec R.Y. Bourhis . 101 6 Otomí Language Shift and Some Recent Efforts to Reverse It Y. Lastra . 142 7 Reversing Quechua Language Shift in South America N.H. Hornberger and K.A. King . 166 Europe 8 Irish Language Production and Reproduction 1981–1996 P.Ó Riagáin . 195 9 A Frisian Update of Reversing Language Shift D. Gorter. 215 10 Reversing Language Shift: The Case of Basque M.-J. Azurmendi, E. Bachoc and F. Zabaleta . 234 11 Catalan a Decade Later M. Strubell. 260 v Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Contents vi Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Africa and Asia 12 Saving Threatened Languages in Africa: A Case Study of Oko E. Adegbija. 284 13 Andamanese: Biological Challenge for Language Reversal E. Annamalai and V. Gnanasundaram . 309 14 Akor Itak – Our Language, Your Language: Ainu in Japan J.C. Maher . 323 15 Hebrew After a Century of RLS Efforts B. Spolsky and E. Shohamy . 350 The Pacific 16 Can the Shift from Immigrant Languages be Reversed in Australia? M. Clyne . 364 17 Is the Extinction of Australia’s Indigenous Languages Inevitable? J. Lo Bianco and M. Rhydwen . 391 18 RLS in Aotearoa/New Zealand 1989–1999 R. Benton and N. Benton . 423 Conclusions 19 From Theory to Practice (and Vice Versa) J.A. Fishman . 451 Index . 484 The Contributors Professor Efurosibina Adegbija teaches at the Department of Modern Eu- ropean Languages, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. His major interests are sociolinguistics, pragmatics and applied linguistics, especially in a natural ESL context. His current research interest is language attidudes. He is the author of Language Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Sociolinguistic Over- view (Multilingual Matters) and he has published several journal articles on that topic. His present focus is on language and attitude change. E. Annamalai, Director Emeritus, Central Institute of Indian Languages, works in the areas of language planning, language education, language contact and grammar. He has designed and guided research on the indig- enous languages of India for their codification and use in education. He has been a Visiting Professor in Tokyo, Leiden and Melbourne. His recent publications include Adjectival Clauses in Tamil (Tokyo, 1996) and Man- aging Multilingualism: Languages Planning and Use in India (New Delhi, 2000). Maria-Josi Azurmendi is Professor in the Department of Social Psychol- ogy, University of the Basque Country (Donostia/San Sebastian, in Spain). She is a specialist in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistic and social psychol- ogy and language, applied mainy to the Basque language. Her most recent book is Psicosociolingüstica (Bilbao, 1999). Erramun Bachoc has been Associate Professor in the Department of Psychopedagogy of Language, Univerity of the Basque Country (Donostia/ San Sebastian, in Spain). Currently, he is the president of the Basque Cul- tural Institute, for promoting the revival of the Basque language in Iparralde (Baiona/Bayonne, in France. Nena Eslao Benton has been resident in New Zealand since 1971, after starting her research career as an urban anthropologist in the Philippines, specializing in family and kinship networks. She was involved in the plan- ning and execution of the sociolinguistic survey of Maori language use carried out by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research in the 1970s, and directed an internship programme to train Maori students in all vii The Contributors viii Can Threatened Languages be Saved? aspects of research, from planning and field work to publication. This led on to pioneering research on the recognition of prior learning in higher ed- ucation. Her involvement in Maori language revitalization efforts has continued, most recently as a consultant to the NZ Government’s Maori Development Education Commission. Richard Benton is currently Director of the James Henare Maori Research Centre at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Associate Direc- tor of Te Matahauariki Institute at the School of Law of the University of Waikato. He first became involved in efforts to secure an acceptance of the Maori language as an essential part of New Zealand’s national life as a stu- dent in the late 1950s. Since then he has studied, written about and lectured on language policy, revitalization of minority languages and related sub- jects in the Pacific, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Professor Richard Y. Bourhis was educated in French and English schools in Montreal and then obtained a BSc in Psychology at McGill University and a PhD in social psychology at the University of Bristol, England. He taught social psychology at McMaster University in Ontario and then at the University of Quebec, Montreal where he is now full Professor. He has published extensively in English and French on topics such as cross- cultural communication, discrimination and intergroup relations, accul- turation and language planning. Michael Clyne, who holds a PhD from Monash University, is currently Professorial Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Language and Soci- ety Centre at that university. His research interests are multilingualism/ language contact, sociolinguistics, inter-cultural communication, and sec- ond language acquisition. Joshua A. Fishman, PhD (Columbia University, 1953: Social Psychology); Ped.D. (Hon.) (Yeshiva University, 1978); D. Litt. (Hon.) (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1986). Distinguished University Research Professor, Social Sci- ences, Yeshiva University. 1966–, Emeritus, 1988, and Visiting Professor, Linguistics and Education, Stanford University, 1992–; Visiting Professor of Education, New York University, 1999–; Long Island University 2000–. Fellow at Centers for Advanced Study: Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1963–1964), Institute for Advanced Projects, East–West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii (1969–1969), Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. (1975–1976), Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Wasenaar, Netherlands (1982–1983), Israel Institute for Advanced Study, Jerusalem (1983). Specialises in the The Contributors ix sociolinguistics of minority languages, small languages and small lan- guage communities, particularly in connection with their language planning processes and reversing language shift. Ofelia García is Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. She has published extensively on bilingual edu- cation, the education of language minorities, especially Latinos, bilingualism, sociology of language and US Spanish. A Fulbright Scholar and Spencer Fellow, she is the editor of Educators for Urban Minorities.In 1997 she co-edited, with Joshua A. Fishman, The Multilingual Apple: Lan- guages in New York City (Mouton de Gruyter). V. Gnanasundaram is Deputy Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages. He has prepared learning/teaching materials and trained teachers for the minority languages of India. He coordinated the Insti- tute’s project to record India’s endangered languages. Durk Gorter studied sociology and sociolinguistics in Groningen, Amster- dam and Santa Barbara (USA). Since 1979 he has been a researcher in the sociology of language at the Fryske Akademy in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, and a part-time Professor of Frisian at the University of Amsterdam. He has been involved in studies of the Frisian language situation and European minority languages on which he has published a number of books and arti- cles. He is currently working on a book about language surveys in Friesland and he also does comparative work
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 71 What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language?1
    Stabilizing Indigenous Languages What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language?1 Joshua Fishman The first paper that I wrote in 1948 on native languages had to do with what is the impact of bilingualism on students. There were still parents then who were concerned that if their children learned another language it would ruin their English accent. If you would hear the tones of another languages every time they spoke English, how would they get a job and what would people think of them? Today, forty-five years later, we are still not “home” at convincing public opinion and the authorities that it is worth having all the languages we have today. Therefore, I want to start with this question, “What is lost when a lan- guage is lost?” It is amazing how people are uncomfortable about answering that question. I remember my mother always telling me, “When you start off a talk, make sure people know what the question is and ask a good question. A good question is worth everything.” And I would say to her, “Ma, you know, Americans, they start off a conference with a joke. You have to tell a joke for people to know that you’re about to speak?” She said, “Jokes? Ask a good ques- tion” That is an old Jewish tradition, if you have a good question, you have something worthwhile to worry about. Attitudes toward language-loss depend on your perspective. When a lan- guage is lost, you might look at that from the perspective of the individual.
    [Show full text]
  • The Vitality of Quebec's English-Speaking Communities: from Myth to Reality
    SENATE SÉNAT CANADA THE VITALITY OF QUEBEC’S ENGLISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITIES: FROM MYTH TO REALITY Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages The Honourable Maria Chaput, Chair The Honourable Andrée Champagne, P.C., Deputy Chair October 2011 (first published in March 2011) For more information please contact us by email: [email protected] by phone: (613) 990-0088 toll-free: 1 800 267-7362 by mail: Senate Committee on Official Languages The Senate of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0A4 This report can be downloaded at: http://senate-senat.ca/ol-lo-e.asp Ce rapport est également disponible en français. Top photo on cover: courtesy of Morrin Centre CONTENTS Page MEMBERS ORDER OF REFERENCE PREFACE INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 QUEBEC‘S ENGLISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITIES: A SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE ........................................................... 4 QUEBEC‘S ENGLISH-SPEAKING COMMUNITIES: CHALLENGES AND SUCCESS STORIES ...................................................... 11 A. Community life ............................................................................. 11 1. Vitality: identity, inclusion and sense of belonging ......................... 11 2. Relationship with the Francophone majority ................................. 12 3. Regional diversity ..................................................................... 14 4. Government support for community organizations and delivery of services to the communities ................................
    [Show full text]
  • Community Development in English-Speaking Communities in Québec: Lessons Learned from a Participatory Action Research Project
    Community development in English-speaking communities in Québec: lessons learned from a participatory action research project INSTITUT NATIONAL DE SANTÉ PUBLIQUE DU QUÉBEC Community development in English-speaking communities in Québec: lessons learned from a participatory action research project Développement des individus et des communautés January 2014 AUTHORS Mary Richardson, PhD, Anthropologist Institut national de santé publique du Québec Shirley Jobson, research professional Institut national de santé publique du Québec Joëlle Gauvin-Racine, research professional Institut national de santé publique du Québec REVIEW COMMITTEE Cheryl Gosselin, Professor Bishop’s University Jennifer Johnson, Executive Director Community Health and Social Services Network Kit Malo Centre for Community Organizations Lorraine O’Donnell Québec English-Speaking Communities Research Network (Concordia University and Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities) Louis Poirier, Chef d’unité Institut national de santé publique du Québec Paule Simard, Chercheure Institut national de santé publique du Québec Normand Trempe, Project coordinator Institut national de santé publique du Québec ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was instigated by the Community Health and Social Services Network (CHSSN) and received financial support from Health Canada. We also wish to acknowledge the valuable comments and suggestions made by the review committee. Ce document est disponible intégralement en format électronique (PDF) sur le site Web de l’Institut national de santé publique du Québec au : http://www.inspq.qc.ca. Les reproductions à des fins d’étude privée ou de recherche sont autorisées en vertu de l’article 29 de la Loi sur le droit d’auteur. Toute autre utilisation doit faire l’objet d’une autorisation du gouvernement du Québec qui détient les droits exclusifs de propriété intellectuelle sur ce document.
    [Show full text]
  • The Case of the Second Person Plural Form Memòria D’ Investigació
    Pronominal variation in Southeast Asian Englishes: the case of the second person plural form Memòria d’ investigació Autora: Eva María Vives Centelles Directora: Cristina Suárez Gómez Departament de Filologia Espanyola, Moderna i Clàssica Universitat de les Illes Balears Data 10 Gener 2014 OUTLINE 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………...........2 2. Brief history of World Englishes ……………………………………............4 3. Theoretical framework: Models of analysis………………………………...6 3.1 Kachru’s Three Concentric Circles……………………………..7 3.2.McArthur’s Circle of World English…………………………..10 3.3.Görlach’s A circle of International English…………………….12 3.4.Schneider’s Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes……….14 4. East and South-East Asian Englishes………………………………………25 4.1. Indian English (IndE) .…………………………………………26 4.2. Hong Kong English (HKE)…………………………………….34 4.3 Singapore English (SingE)……………………………………...38 4.4. The Philippines English (PhilE)………………………………44 5. Second person plural forms in the English language……………………....48 6. Description of the corpus and data analysis……………………………….58 6.1. Description of the corpus………………………………………58 6.2. Data Analysis…………………………………………………..61 7. Conclusions……………………………………………………...................80 8. Limitations of the study…………………………………………………….84 9. Questions for further research……………………………………………...84 10. References.....................................................................................................85 11. Appendix…………………………………………………………………...93 1 1. INTRODUCTION When the American president John Adams (1735-1826)
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Separatism in Quebec
    1 Separatism in Quebec: Off the Agenda but Not Off the Minds of Francophones An Honors Thesis Submitted to the Department of Politics in Partial Fulfillment of the Honors Program By Sarah Weber 5/6/15 2 Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction 3 Chapter 2. 4 Chapter 3. 17 Chapter 4. 36 Chapter 5. 41 Chapter 6. 50 Chapter 7. Conclusion 65 3 Chapter 1: Introduction-The Future of Quebec The Quebec separatist movement has been debated for decades and yet no one can seem to come to a conclusion regarding what the future of the province holds for the Quebecers. This thesis aims to look at the reasons for the Quebec separatist movement occurring in the past as well as its steady level of support. Ultimately, there is a split within the recent literature in Quebec, regarding those who believe that independence is off the political agenda and those who think it is back on the agenda. This thesis looks at public opinion polls, and electoral returns, to find that the independence movement is ultimately off the political agenda as of the April 2014 election, but continues to be supported in Quebec public opinion. I will first be analyzing the history of Quebec as well as the theories other social scientists have put forward regarding separatist and nationalist movements in general. Next I will be analyzing the history of Quebec in order to understand why the Quebec separatist movement came about. I will then look at election data from 1995-2012 in order to identify the level of electoral support for separatism as indicated by the vote for the Parti Quebecois (PQ).
    [Show full text]
  • From Ancient Manuscripts to Modern Dictionaries Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages
    From Ancient Manuscripts to Modern Dictionaries Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages 9 Series Editor Terry C. Falla Editorial Board Index Editor James K. Aitken Georgia Kate Kelly Aaron Michael Butts Daniel King Wido van Peursen Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages (PLAL) contains peer-reviewed essays, monographs, and reference works. It focuses on the theory and practice of ancient-language research and lexicography that is informed by modern linguistics. From Ancient Manuscripts to Modern Dictionaries Select Studies in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek Edited by Tarsee Li Keith Dyer gp 2017 Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2017 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2017 ܒ 1 ISBN 978-1-4632-0608-6 ISSN 2165-2600 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Society of Biblical Literature. International Meeting. | Li, Tarsee, editor. | Dyer, Keith D., 1951- editor. Title: From ancient manuscripts to modern dictionaries : select studies in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek / edited by Tarsee Li & Keith Dyer. Description: Piscataway, NJ : Gorgias Press, [2017] | Series: Perspectives on linguistics and ancient languages, ISSN 2165-2600 ; 9 | Includes
    [Show full text]
  • French Influence in Canadian English from the 18Th Century: from Words to Sounds? Julie Rouaud
    French Influence in Canadian English from the 18th century: from words to sounds? Julie Rouaud To cite this version: Julie Rouaud. French Influence in Canadian English from the 18th century: from words to sounds?. 12e colloque international PAC, Sep 2016, Aix-en-Provence, France. hal-01936077 HAL Id: hal-01936077 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01936077 Submitted on 27 Nov 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. French Influence in Canadian English from the 18th century: from words to sounds? Julie Rouaud [email protected] Introduction: What is Canadian English? Canadian English is often described as: • Relatively homogeneous variety of English (Josselin-Leray, Durand, Lopez, 2015). • 2 sets of linguistic norms: similar to General American (e.g. rhotic variety), while retaining some British English features (e.g. suffix –ile [ail] unlike General American [Əl] in words like fragile). However Canadian English also has its specificity: • The linguistic situation in Canada has been complex from the 18th century (see map): • Built on colonization and immigration in addition to indigenous people. • Unique contacts between French and English facilitating linguistic interactions and mutual influence until now.
    [Show full text]
  • Joshua A. Fishman: a Scholar of Unfathomable Influence Nancy H
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons GSE Publications Graduate School of Education 2017 Joshua A. Fishman: A Scholar of Unfathomable Influence Nancy H. Hornberger University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Psychology Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons, and the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Hornberger, N. H. (2017). Joshua A. Fishman: A Scholar of Unfathomable Influence. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 243 17-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2016-0043 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/475 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Joshua A. Fishman: A Scholar of Unfathomable Influence Abstract In personal tribute to Joshua A. Fishman, I tell a few stories about this remarkable scholar as I got to know him – a glimpse of the person behind the great ideas that have so powerfully shaped our thinking. My many vivid memories of things Fishman said or wrote in my personal encounters with him – often pithy one-liners – are testimony to the power of his mind and voice, his spirit and soul. From my first year of Ph.D. study when I took his course Sociology of Bilingual Education at the 1980 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, through our interactions over the succeeding decades at conferences and talks, in personal visits and interviews, and around publications he invited me to write or vice versa, Fishman’s influence on my own academic career was enduring and profound.
    [Show full text]
  • "Evolution of Human Languages": Current State of Affairs
    «Evolution of Human Languages»: current state of affairs (03.2014) Contents: I. Currently active members of the project . 2 II. Linguistic experts associated with the project . 4 III. General description of EHL's goals and major lines of research . 6 IV. Up-to-date results / achievements of EHL research . 9 V. A concise list of actual problems and tasks for future resolution. 18 VI. EHL resources and links . 20 2 I. Currently active members of the project. Primary affiliation: Senior researcher, Center for Comparative Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). Web info: http://ivka.rsuh.ru/article.html?id=80197 George Publications: http://rggu.academia.edu/GeorgeStarostin Starostin Research interests: Methodology of historical linguistics; long- vs. short-range linguistic comparison; history and classification of African languages; history of the Chinese language; comparative and historical linguistics of various language families (Indo-European, Altaic, Yeniseian, Dravidian, etc.). Primary affiliation: Visiting researcher, Santa Fe Institute. Formerly, professor of linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Ilia Publications: http://orlabs.oclc.org/identities/lccn-n97-4759 Research interests: Genetic and areal language relationships in Southeast Asia; Peiros history and classification of Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Austroasiatic languages; macro- and micro-families of the Americas; methodology of historical linguistics. Primary affiliation: Senior researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow / Novosibirsk). Web info / publications list (in Russian): Sergei http://www.inslav.ru/index.php?option- Nikolayev =com_content&view=article&id=358:2010-06-09-18-14-01 Research interests: Comparative Indo-European and Slavic studies; internal and external genetic relations of North Caucasian languages; internal and external genetic relations of North American languages (Na-Dene; Algic; Mosan).
    [Show full text]
  • Heritage Languages in North America: Sociolinguistic Approaches
    journal of language contact 11 (2018) 201-207 brill.com/jlc Heritage Languages in North America: Sociolinguistic Approaches Joshua R. Brown University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire [email protected] Joshua Bousquette University of Georgia [email protected] Presentation This special issue of the Journal of Language Contact focuses on heritage lan- guages in the United States. Heritage languages offer new opportunities and pose new theoretical, empirical and methodological questions, in that tradi- tional lines of inquiry cannot be directly imported from the study of monolin- gual speakers alone; and even in comparison to other bilingual communities, the social contexts and patterns of language use over the lifespan do not map onto traditional L1/L2 models. The last two decades have witnessed an increased interest in formal and experimental research on heritage languages, building on both recent scholarship with wide-reaching implications (e.g., Benmamoun et al., 2013; Montrul, 2008), as well as foundational, twentieth-century works on immigration, migration, and language contact in the American context (e.g., Haugen, 1953; Weinreich et al., 1968). In addition to documenting language use in individual communities in language contact situations, the field of heritage language linguistics must engage with: • previous scholarship and approaches to the study of language use, which must be adapted or amended for the study of heritage languages; • the role of English in heritage language bilingualism in the u.s. as an enrich- ing or limiting factor; • the role of the pre-immigration sociolinguistic context and variety, both in the first (founder) generation of immigrants, and the possible continued exposure to the monolingual standard of the homeland; © Joshua R.
    [Show full text]
  • Iswitch: Spanish-English Mixing in Computer-Mediated Communication
    journal of language contact 9 (2016) 23-48 brill.com/jlc iSwitch: Spanish-English Mixing in Computer-Mediated Communication Cecilia Montes-Alcalá Georgia Institute of Technology [email protected] Abstract Technology, and the Internet in particular, have rapidly transformed the means of com- munication in the 21st century, opening the door to a novel and fertile ground of research. What takes place when bi- or multilingual individuals sit at the keyboard has been the focus of several studies exploring computer-mediated communication (cmc). However, there appears to be a lack of research dealing specifically with Spanish- English language mixing online, a surprising fact given that Spanish is the third lan- guage of the Internet and its use has grown 800% in the last decade. The present work analyzes and compares data from three different sources of cmc (e-mail, blogs, and social networks including Facebook and Twitter) among Spanish-English bilinguals in an attempt to further explore the still relatively new field of “electronic code-switch- ing”. The study aims to outline the reasons behind bilingual individuals’ language mix- ing online, hypothesizing that it will accomplish many of the socio-pragmatic functions traditionally ascribed to oral code-switching along with, perhaps, other uses idiosyn- cratic of cmc. Furthermore, it intends to emphasize the cultural nature of code-switch- ing, a crucial component that has often been overlooked in the search for grammatical constraints. Keywords code-switching – language mixing – computer-mediated communication (cmc) – bilingualism – Spanish-English * I am sincerely grateful to María Victoria Yépez Lasso and Leyre Goitia Pastor for their active and voluntary collaboration in the data gathering for the e-mail corpus and also to my stu- dents Casey Aultman, Cody Fortune, and Jordan Kor for their assistance in collecting and coding the data in the social media corpus.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report the Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia)
    Annual Report The Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia) 2006 Bilbao, 2007 Introduction 2006 was an eventful year for Euskaltzaindia, the Royal Academy of the Basque Language. Changes to the Academy’s internal regulations, unanymously approved at Euskaltzaindia’s internal conference held at Argomaiz in 2005, came into effect in 2006 ushering in for the first time the creation of the figure of Emeritus Member of the Academy. Six full academy members over 75 years of age, Jose Antonio Arana Martija, Piarres Xarritton, Xabier Diharce “Iratzeder”, Jean Haritschelhar, Emile Larre and Antonio Zavala, entered the Emeritus category while retaining their former privileges as full members, providing they attend meetings. Sadly, the year deprived us of Patxi Altuna, full member of Euskaltzaindia, and Gaizka Barandiaran and Jose Mari Etxaburu “Kamiñazpi”, corresponding members, who passed away in 2006 and whose presence among us will be sorely missed. In the course of Euskaltzaindia’s ongoing process of self-rejuvenation, three new academy members were appointed during the year: Jose Irazu “Bernardo Atxaga”, Mikel Zalbide and Andoni Sagarna. Although all three hail from the same province, Gipuzkoa, they differ widely in professional backgrounds, and we look forward to the expertise they will contribute to the Basque Language Academy in the fields of literary production, educational administration and computer science, respectively. Two full academy members admitted the previous year delivered their inaugural lectures this year, Ana Toledo in Antzuola (in the Deba Valley), and Patxi Salaberri in Uxue (in southern Navarre). Twenty-five new corresponding members of the Academy from different parts of our country were also appointed, in acknowledgment of and gratitude for their efforts in support of the Basque language in cooperation with Euskaltzaindia over past years, and hopefully well into the future too.
    [Show full text]