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Changing Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in Transnational Settings: From Settlement to Mobility

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The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the study of language maintenance and shift in transnational (migrant) contexts. It comprises a brief history of the field, covering its emergence, development, and expansion during the twentieth century. It includes a discussion of the main approaches investigating the processes of language maintenance and shift as well as the theories put forward to understand these processes and account for differences in the language practices of various ethnolinguistic groups. The final section moves beyond the twentieth century and focuses on how globalisation has significantly altered what constitutes ‘migration’. Rather than seeing it primarily as a process resulting in ‘permanent’ (re)settlement elsewhere, migration increasingly results in ongoing mobility. Such changes in turn affect language practices in diaspora contexts and impact our understanding of what constitutes language maintenance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although terms like ‘transnational’, ‘migrant’, and ‘diasporic’ have different historical contexts and hence are not equivalent, I will be using these here synonymously.

  2. 2.

    The GIDS is not the only framework or model developed to ‘predict’ LS (see Pauwels 2016a for other models) and has not escaped critical appraisals (e.g., Clyne 2003; Williams 2007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, SOAS, University of London, London, UK

    Anne Pauwels

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  1. Anne Pauwels
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  1. School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

  2. Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Bernadette O’Rourke

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Pauwels, A. (2019). Changing Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in Transnational Settings: From Settlement to Mobility. In: Hogan-Brun, G., O’Rourke, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_9

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