To have a better understanding of the sociolinguistic surroundings of Japanese Brazilians as return migrants in Japan, this study investigates language use in their communities from a perspective of linguistic landscape (LL), paying particular attention to their ethnic identity as to how they are viewed by the host society, including language…

This study is a sociolinguistic exploration into the survival of a transnational language in the United States - a multilingual and multicultural environment. Using an adapted General Ethnicity Questionnaire, it interrogates the social dimensions of heritage language use and the diverse linguistic experiences of 120 first-generation Yorùbá-English…

Based on Spolsky's (2004) tripartite framework for language policy, this study explores language practices, language ideology, and language management in relation to minority languages, Putonghua, and English in ethnic minority families in Yunnan, China. Through observations of and interviews with nine interethnic marriage families in Kena Village…

This paper investigates language practices, language attitudes and identity belongings of East Timorese in the Netherlands. Data were gathered through a limited orally conducted sociolinguistic questionnaire and two in-depth interviews on the sociolinguistic trajectories of our participants. The questionnaire shows that second-generation East…

This article explores language repertoires, attitudes, and practices amongst members of the East Timorese diaspora in Australia. It relies on quantitative and qualitative data gathered through a recent sociolinguistic survey, ethnographic observation, as well as on general observations of online language use. Our study reveals a complex…

We assess the sociolinguistic vitality of Romeyka, the only Asia Minor Greek variety, which, albeit endangered, is still spoken in the Black Sea region, Turkey (historically known as Pontus), by means of nine extralinguistic (i.e. sociological) and sociolinguistic factors, specially tailored for the situation of Romeyka. Our current vitality…

A significant body of research has begun to explore the association between language and identity, a relationship that becomes more complex when considering multilingual communities. Important for this field, a number of studies have examined the interrelation between language and identity in the Cuban population in the USA, a case in which…

Sociolinguistic research on language attitudes has revealed that non-standard accented speakers are usually perceived more negatively than members of the dominant speech community. Few studies, however, have examined whether a speaker's ethnicity, evidenced by nonlinguistic factors such as appearance, may play a role in listeners' perception of…

The term "Citetaal" was originally used to refer to the language spoken by Italian immigrants in the Eastern part of Flanders (Limburg) and diffused in the former ghettoised mining areas (the cite). It is a melting pot language, based on Dutch but with a high amount of code mixture from immigrant languages, mostly Italian and Turkish.…

In this paper, I analysed Korean ESL immigrants' ethnic name changing phenomena. The interpretive discourse analyses of the 15 interview data obtained from six new immigrants, documented that four of them maintained their Korean names, whereas others anglicised their names depending upon their subjective identity positionings in a new society. In…

The Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul has long existed as a bilingual Greek and Turkish grouping and remains largely unstudied. The sharp decrease in the size of this community to approximately 1000 members raises questions as to the maintenance of Greek in this setting. This study attempts to establish the current status of Greek in the…

Illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in bilingual education, including inadequate appraisal of matters such as ethnicity, cultural pluralism, and language maintenance and shift. The paper suggests that bilingual education and its implications must be considered in the broadest possible sociocultural perspectives. (Author/PJM)

Part of a larger project on ethnolinguistic vitality and bilingual development, this study compares anglophones and francophones on their linguistic contacts in French and English, linguistic proficiency, vitality beliefs, ethnolinguistic identities, and social language use. The assimilation process is attributed to low schooling and…

Studies language contact and language shift among different generations of Japanese immigrants in Brazil. The social factors involved in the abandonment of the ethnic (Japanese) code is considered. Results indicate that, typically, ethnic identity switch is accompanied by mother tongue replacement with Portuguese by the third generation.…

Investigates the status of Arabic in the U.S. in four institutional areas: (1) the periodical press; (2) radio and television; (3) ethnic community schools; and (4) places of worship. Findings based on responses to questionnaires distributed in 1981 and 1982 indicate conscious efforts to maintain Arabic in these communities. (SED)