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Language Awareness and Multilingualism pp 1–13Cite as

Language Contact, Language Awareness, and Multilingualism

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Language and Education ((ELE))

Abstract

The article addresses the notion of language awareness in contact linguistics. The notion has recently become a focus in many neighboring disciplines such as language learning and teaching, multilingualism and multilingual identities, discursive aspects of multilingualism, heritage language research, early multilingualism, and some others. In contact linguistics language awareness has been dealt with mostly implicitly. The article takes the definition of language awareness (provided by Association of Language Awareness) as a point of departure and suggests that the link between language contacts and language awareness appears in the following topics: code-switching, multilingual conversation, and aspects of language choice; awareness of contact effects in language planning; language attitudes in multilingual communities; individual awareness and conscious use of contact-induced features; emergence of mixed languages; multilingual interaction and receptive multilingualism; multilingualism and emotions; and multilingual linguistic creativity. To date, there are few contact linguistic models that include language awareness. Some of them are discussed in the final section of the article: Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) notion of equivalence in contact-induced grammaticalization, Matras’ (2012) activity-oriented approach to multilingualism and probabilistic scale of awareness in various types of contact-induced effects, and Thomason’s (2007) idea of change by deliberate decision and negotiation as mechanisms of contact-induced language change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanity, Tallinn University, Narva mnt 29, room S545, 10120, Tallinn, Estonia

    Anna Verschik

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  1. Anna Verschik
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Correspondence to Anna Verschik .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept Res Methods Education, University of the Basque Country Dept Res Methods Education, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Jasone Cenoz

  2. UPV/EHU - IKERBASCQUE, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU - IKERBASCQUE, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Durk Gorter

  3. Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, School of Critic, Auckland, New Zealand

    Stephen May

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Verschik, A. (2015). Language Contact, Language Awareness, and Multilingualism. In: Cenoz, J., Gorter, D., May, S. (eds) Language Awareness and Multilingualism. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_21-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_21-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02325-0

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Language Contact, Language Awareness, and Multilingualism
    Published:
    04 January 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_21-2

  2. Original

    Language Contact, Language Awareness, and Multilingualism
    Published:
    10 September 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_21-1

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