SOCIOLINGUISTICS Language Shift and Maintenance

Presented By: Group 4 Diah Yulyawati Gea Aulia Rachmah Indah Dwi Cahayany Nureviani Sayyidah Balqies

Language Death
Factors contributing to language shift and revival

Content

Language Maintenance

Language Revival

Language Shift
the process by which communities adopt another language referred to as language transfer or language replacement

Divided into:
Migrant Minorities Non-migrant communities Migrant Majorities

Migrant Minorities
Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual At first, migrants use the hosts language in limited domains and reserve the home domain for their mother tongue, but soon the host language gradually infiltrates their homes through their children. There is also pressure from the hosts on migrants to conform, which results in language shift from their mother tongue to the host language.

Non-migrant Communities
Language shift does not always result from migration; - political, - economic, or - social (changes within the community of speakers). It is almost a rule that the more domains in which a minority language is used, the more likely it will be maintained. Where minority languages have resisted language shift the longest, there has been at least one exclusive domain for the minority language.

Migrant Majorities
Colonization
The colonial powers impose their languages on the colonies.

More Population The Dominant Culture

Definition of Language Death

Language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety.

Stages of language death

There are three stages of language death. They are: 1) Language Shift In language shift, people begin to use one language more than another, and may encourage their children to pick the new language. Eventually, the community is using one language, not the other. 2) Moribund A language is moribund if no children are learning the language as their first language 3) Dead A language is dead if there are no living speakers of the language.

Types of Language Death

In examining types of language death, we need to distinguish between: the cause and the speed of a given language death.

Types of Language Death Classification in terms of cause

Language death due to the death of population A language may become extinct due to the death of the entire population that speaks it. The causes for this type of death cited in the literature include the following: warfare, genocide, extermination, volcanic eruptions, tsunami, and epidemics. Language death due to language shift This occurs when a given language dies because its speaker shifts to another language.

Types of Language Death Classification in terms of speed

In term of speed, language death may be classified as follows: (i) instant death or sudden death, and (ii) gradual death or slow death. Campbell and Muntzel (1989: 182ff) that distinguish between four different types of language death: 1) Sudden Death 2) Radical Death 3) Gradual Death 4) Bottom-to-Top Death

Factor Contributing of Language Shift

According to Holmes (1992), the following are some factors which could contribute to language shift and language maintenance. 1) Economic, Political and Social Factor Economic Factor Initially, the most obvious factor is that the community sees an economic. Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning another language.

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Social Factor The second important factor, then, seems to be that the community sees no reason to take active steps to maintain their ethnic language. When there is a community of speakers moving to a region or a country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language . Political Factor Rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to get on in a society where knowledge of the second language is a prerequisite for success.

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2) Demographic Factors Demographic factors are also relevant in accounting for the speed of language shift. Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in urban areas. 3) Attitudes and Values Language shift tends to be slower among communities where a language is highly valued, especially if the language is seen as an important symbol of identity. Positives attitudes supports efforts to use minority language in a variety of domains, and this helps people resist the pressure from the majority group to switch to their language.

Definition of Language Revival

Language revival is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. In simply, language revival is when people try to make a language that is not spoken, or is spoken very little, spoken more often again.

Example of Revived Language

Hebrew Hebrew was revived as a spoken language two millennia after it ceased to be spoken, and is considered a language revival "success story". The language was extinct as a spoken language until the 19th century. Maori Mori is the indigenous language of New Zealand, where it was commonly spoken until the 20th century. In recent times initiatives have been taken to revitalize Mori as a spoken language.

David Crystal, in his book Language Death, proposes six factors which may help a language to progress:
increase their prestige within the dominant community increase their wealth increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community have a strong presence in the education system can write down the language can make use of electronic technology

Based on Holmes (1992), there are efforts that can be done in order to maintain a language.
the use of minority language in education, e.g. bilingual education programmes, using or teaching the minority language in school, in pre-school, and in after-school programmes, support by the law and administration, e.g. the right to use the language in court, the House of Assembly, in dealing with government officials, etc., the use of the language in places of worship, e.g. for services, sermons, hymns, chants, use of and support for the language in the media, e.g. TV programmes, radio programmes, newspapers, magazines.

Conclusion and Suggestion

Language is important since it used as a tool to communicate. Language is also part of anyones identity and culture. So it is important for us to keep the existence of languages in this world. Because by letting a language die, it is almost the same with letting part of someone identity die and nation loses its tradition. There are many different reasons for choosing a particular language or variety in a multilingual community. The various constraints on language choice faced by different families are described in this mini research. The factors which contribute to language shift also can be the factors contributing to language maintenance. The most dominant factors for language shift and maintenance is economy and social factors, meanwhile the least factor is attitude and value.