Rethinking some terminological and disciplinary boundaries in researching language maintenance and shift (in the context of migration and beyond)

Abstract

Abstract After more than half a century, sociolinguistic research on language maintenance and shift has developed in different directions depending on the type of speech community it focuses on. The similarities between “indigenous” as autochthonous and “migrant” as allochthonous languages undergoing shift have often been overlooked and the two have been treated differently. Such a division not only reflects a much-debated dichotomy between “old” and “new” minorities in political and legal scholarship, but is also linked to different legal and institutional treatments of such minorities and their languages. However, at a time when the mobilities paradigm has become an integral aspect of sociolinguistic scholarship, there is a need to rethink the way in which sociolinguists have come to terms with migration so far, including a highly problematic and artificial separation of different types of linguistic community based on perceived migrational status. Such a rethink is needed in order to be able to provide more contextualized analyses of locally specific sociolinguistic realities, which can rarely be determined on the basis of widely assumed categorizations.