Language planners are increasingly aware of the importance of new speakers (individuals acquiring a language outside the home, typically later-on in life) for the revitalisation of minority languages. Yet, little is known about new speakers' activation (the process by which they become active and habitual minority language users). This article…

This article uses cognitive measures previously developed within linguistic relativity research to explore the thinking patterns of Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children in the Yucatan peninsula. These measures were designed to detect cognitive patterns associated with specific language patterns. Here, these measures are used to test whether 12…

This study investigates diglossic patterns of language use by speakers of Zoroastrian Dari in the city of Yazd, where most of Zoroastrian population of Iran lives. Efforts have been made to find out how, when and why the spoken language of Dari is favoured by Zoroastrian community members. For this reason, the evaluation by the informants of their…

This paper investigates the retention of Polish language and culture by first generation Polish migrants from the 1980s and their second generation offspring (aged 15-24) from endogamous and exogamous marriages. We examine various domains such as the home, social networks, visits to Poland, institutions of learning, the Polish media, the Polish…

Where there are two or more languages in contact, language shift is inevitable. Shift or maintenance happens at individual or societal levels due to social and psychological conditions in which community members are in. Pattern of language use in a family and the attitudes of family members towards heritage language or the language of the wider…

This article offers a critical analysis of the language socialization of Spanish-speaking families in a Scout group in Metro Vancouver. Using tools of discourse analysis, the article examines the language use patterns of the participants, particularly focusing on the language ideologies to which they oriented themselves and the identities indexed…

The father's role in children's L1 maintenance and L2 learning is a relatively unexplored area. This study considers the L1 and L2 proficiency of 30 Korean-English late bilinguals who immigrated to New Zealand during their adolescence and how their L1 and L2 proficiency is influenced by the language use of family members. Data were collected…

Presents data on patterns of language use by Italians living in Australia, focusing on the maintenance of Italian and Dialect under the impact of widespread shift to English. Data from self-report surveys suggest differences by gender, age, and region of origin and note that the position of Italian, though more limited, is somewhat more solid than…

There have been few Australian studies of language maintenance amongst immigrant languages from the Indian subcontinent. The present study focuses on Tamil speakers in Melbourne from Sri Lanka or India, who are Hindus or Christians. Tamil is a pluricentric language that has been under the domination of English in these countries, at least amongst…

An examination of language retention among the Mexican Americans and the factors involved in their language maintenance despite pressure from a dominant American society strongly supporting the use of the English Language. (JM)

Presents findings from a sociolinguistic study of the language use and language attitudes of Hispanic families in a small community in upstate New York. Sought to identify and describe the familial linguistic patterns that are leading to an emerging population of US-born Spanish speakers by examining the factors that are related to Spanish…

Among both first- and second-generation immigrant groups in New Zealand and Australia, women maintain the ethnic language (EL) longer than men. Compared with men's networks, women's networks encourage more extensive use of EL in social interactions, and women value the social and affective functions expressed by EL. (Contains 71 references.…

This atlas of language vitality in China covers the majority Han (Mandarin) language and 59 officially recognized minority languages. The first section, on the Han language, gives a breakdown of its oral and written vitality overall and for eight domains (religion, schools, mass media, administration, courts, legislature, manufacturing industries,…

A non-structural model is proposed for quantifying and analyzing the dynamics of language attrition, particularly among immigrants in a second language environment, based on examination of disfluencies (hesitations, errors, and repairs). The first chapter discusses limitations of the conventional synchronic textual approach to analyzing language…

Describes the characteristics of language conflict and examines the areas of emphasis in the literature, including multilingualism and linguistic identity, glottophagia and minority/majority relations, the danger of reliance on language censuses, conflict resolution/avoidance, and the importance of ecolinguistics in conflict description and for…