New Perspectives On Language Maintenance And Language Shift I

A comprehensive discussion of the key aspects of this important sub-field of language contact and multilingualism studies.

This book examines minority language maintenance and loss in Spanish-speaking families in communities in the US with a low ethnolinguistic vitality for Spanish. It offers an account of the gendered nature of linguistic transmission and compares the self-perceptions, motivations and attitudes of members of two generations in the same household.

The diffusion of English and the increasing mediatization of our globalized world have significant impacts on our perceptions of language and culture. Beginning with an overview of how the conceptualization of language is currently debated in sociolinguistics and related fields, this book highlights the need for a new perspective on language mobility. Through examining the use of English on German radio morning shows, the book explores the dynamics of language use in times of accelerated globalization and provides insights into how the media operate within the global flows of messages and linguistic resources that characterize our mediatized societies. In doing so, it demonstrates how combining the different perspectives of a sociolinguistics of mobility and contact linguistics allows for a thorough investigation of language practices in society, and advances the theoretical and practical approaches to the study of language mobility as a result.

This major new survey of sociolinguistics identifies gaps in our existing knowledge base and provides directions for future research.

The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices seem to have reached new levels since the communications revolution of the late twentieth century. At the same time face-to-face communication is still the main force of language identity, even if social and peer networks of the traditional face-to-face nature are facing stiff competition of the Facebook-to-Facebook sort. The most authoritative guide to the state of the field, this handbook shows that sociolinguistics provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.

Even a cursory look at conference programs and proceedings reveals a burgeoning interest in the field of social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development. To date, however, research on this topic has been published in piecemeal fashion, subsumed under the more general umbrella of ‘bilingualism’. Within bilingualism research, there has been an extensive exploration of linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives on the one hand, and educational practices and outcomes on the other. In comparison, social and affective factors – which lead people to either maintain or shift the language – have been under-researched. This is the first volume that brings together the different strands in research on social and affective factors in home language maintenance and development, ranging from the micro-level (family language policies and practices), to the meso-level (community initiatives) and the macro-level (mainstream educational policies and their implementation). The volume showcases a wide distribution across contexts and populations explored. Contributors from around the world represent different research paradigms and perspectives, providing a rounded overview of the state-of-the-art in this flourishing field.

**Honored as a 2013 Choice Outstanding Academic Title** Comprising state-of-the-art research, this substantially expanded and revised Handbook discusses the latest global and interdisciplinary issues across bilingualism and multilingualism. Includes the addition of ten new authors to the contributor team, and coverage of seven new topics ranging from global media to heritage language learning Provides extensively revised coverage of bilingual and multilingual communities, polyglot aphasia, creolization, indigenization, linguistic ecology and endangered languages, multilingualism, and forensic linguistics Brings together a global team of internationally-renowned researchers from different disciplines Covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from neuro- and psycho-linguistic research to studies of media and psychological counseling Assesses the latest issues in worldwide linguistics, including the phenomena and the conceptualization of 'hyperglobalization', and emphasizes geographical centers of global conflict and commerce