Linguistic Assimilation Research Articles

Language hierarchies in Georgia: an experimental approach

ABSTRACTHow do Georgian citizens of different nationalities evaluate people when they speak in different languages? This article presents the results of three sets of “matched-guise” experiments, a method long used by sociolinguists to evaluate attitudes to different language varieties and their speakers. The results are revealing of the language hierarchies that prevail in Tbilisi and in the southern border regions of Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli (where Georgia's Armenian and Azerbaijani populations are concentrated). Our results suggest that social rewards for linguistic assimilation from one national group to another are very low in both rural and urban parts of Georgia. These findings show that with linguistic assimilation unrewarded, contemporary language hierarchies leave room for Russian to be sustained as a bridge language between communities. The results also show that native speakers of English are afforded higher social status than native speakers of Russian in Tbilisi.

Educational and national orientations of Russian national minority of Transcarpathia in the 40-90 years of XX century

The article investigates the Russian national minority which was the youngest in Transcarpathia. It had been formed during1944-1990 by a deliberate state policy and played a role in the political and ideological domination of the Soviet regime. At the same time, it played an important past in the process of linguistic Russification and assimilation of the local population. Their quantitative growth is fully connected with the constant influx of Russian-speaking migrants and processes the Russification of the local population.

Collective (white) memories of Māori language loss (or not)

Language policies have a better chance of succeeding if they align with the persuasions of the polity, and this is only more pronounced in the case of endangered languages, such as Te Reo (the Māori language) in New Zealand. There, a comprehensive suite of laws, policies, and programmes are in place to acknowledge and reverse the linguistic consequences of British colonisation and previous laws of linguistic assimilation. However, this history and benevolent rationale are generally hidden in policy documents and only implied in public discourse. Drawing on the findings of a large-scale qualitative online survey that obtained folk linguistic knowledge and beliefs about language revitalisation in New Zealand, this paper identifies whether non-indigenous youth claim Te Reo is or is not endangered, and analyses the diachronic and synchronic sociolinguistic reasoning these youth use to arrive at their claims. In doing so, the paper also draws on collective memory theory in sociology to especially consider whether, and to what extent, the folk linguistic commentary of these non-indigenous youth sustains a collective memory of Te Reo language loss at the hands of colonial Pākeha forefathers.

Is Eurasian State Building Reducible to Cultural Politics?

Is Eurasian State Building Reducible to Cultural Politics? Huri Islamoglu (bio) Alfred J. Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War. 652 pp., maps. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN-13 978-1107043091. $95.00. Alfred Rieber’s The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands is a world history that distances itself from two Eurocentric forms of historical bifurcation. First, Rieber rejects the division of history into two irreconcilable trajectories, European and non-European, whereby Europe represents the Mecca of modern transformation and the reference point for non-Europe, including most of Eurasia. Second, Rieber’s history is distanced from the temporal bifurcation of world history into premodern and modern, whereby premodernity is considered to be the “time” of non-European regions, and modernity is assumed to belong to the West. Rieber is not concerned with Western modernity. Nor is he interested in capitalist development or the question of why it happened in the West and not in the East—a question that is often (in the Weberian tradition) answered with reference to political or religious culture. Instead, Rieber’s history is a comparative study of imperial state building in Eurasia that geographically cuts across East–West demarcations. He includes “Western” imperial units, such as the Habsburgs and (arguably) Russia, together with the “Eastern” empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids. Rejecting views of geopolitical exigencies and of messianic destinies—most specifically with respect to Russian history—Rieber analyzes the maintenance of imperial entities with reference primarily to power relations among different states and, within each imperial space, between the imperial core and the subjugated peoples. The latter struggle unfolds primarily on a cultural terrain, with borderlands continually fending off the center’s attempts at linguistic assimilation and religious conversion and seeking to retain their local autonomy and cultural [End Page 935] identity. The center’s strategies toward the borderlands ranged from compromise through tolerance to repression. In fact, for Rieber, it is the success of the cultural politics of the imperial core—its ability to accommodate the religious and ethnic communities in the borderlands or the periphery—that largely determines the success of imperial units and their immunity to infiltration by other states. At issue here is Rieber’s characterization of borderlands as “shatter zones” vulnerable to ideological penetration by other states or to movements of autonomy, including nationalist ones. In Rieber’s analysis, imperial ideologies are central to the making of multicultural states; imperial cultures (secular and religious, often a combination replete with contradictions) were part of the statecraft of multicultural polities and provided them with flexibility in adapting to changing power relations with other states and in accommodating cultural resistance in the borderlands. Rieber traces the trajectories of the multicultural “confessional” states’ disintegration to an erosion of the religious foundations of imperial cultures faced with exposure to Western secularist, rational thinking in the 19th century and the emergence of secular elites. Although, in a sense, this understanding approximates modernization perspectives that assign agency to Western ideas and institutions in the transformation of old empires, Rieber himself appears to view the passing of the imperial with a degree of nostalgia and the coming of the “modern” and the “Western” with a dose of apprehension. The advent of Western secular influence, in turn, pushed the imperial centers into defensive positions whereby they embraced an exclusionary religious ideology, while nationalism, characterized by Rieber as an effective state-building ideology, prevailed in the borderlands. Following the collapse of multicultural states in the early 20th century, state-building ventures in former imperial spaces resulted in the rise of secular, nationalist rulers who pursued policies of forceful homogenization of multiple ethnic and religious groups into a single national mode—Adolf Hitler, Mustafa Kemal, and even communist rulers like Stalin. In this respect, he privileges the Confucian imperial state culture and sees its accommodative capacities as accounting for the resilience and success of the Qing imperial state.1 As he remarks, “ethnic and religious hostility played no role …, in part because the Confucian ethical system had no place for either prejudice” (32). He views other imperial ideologies as more problematic, since...

Edizione straordinaria! Read all about it! - Appunti sulla lingua delle pubblicità in alcuni numeri della Gazzetta del Massachusetts.

EDIZIONE STRAORDINARIA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! – NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE FIRST EDITIONS OF THE GAZZETTA DEL MASSACHUSETTS In this article, I base my research on Franco Pierno’s 2012 article on “la lingua raminga,” which studies the Italian subcode used in the first ethnic journalistic publications in North America. First, I present some history of advertising in Italy, focusing, then, on how that translated in the ItaloAmerican setting in Massachusetts. In the bulk of the paper, I analyse the advertisements published in the first issues of the Gazzetta del Massachusetts (GdM; from 1903 and 1904), exploring in detail the employment of loanwords, both whole and adapted, over the course of the GdM’s early publications. I break my discussion down into the following sections of linguistic study: spelling and phonetics; morphology; vocabulary; and syntax. I conclude with some final thoughts on whether the increase in loanwords coincides not just with the greater size of the Italian community in Boston, but also the deeper linguistic assimilation of the predominant anglophone culture.

Black September and Identity Construction in Jordan

Abstract The events of Black September were a turning point in the development of Jordanian identity. As a result of the attempt on King Hussein's life on 1st September 1970 and the subsequent bloody civil war that played out between the Palestinian Resistance Movements that had acted as a “state within a state” inside Jordan, the Hashemite government expelled from the country the Palestinian Liberation Organization and other Fedayeen groups that comprised the Palestinian Resistance Movements. A second consequence of the war was the increased distrust of Palestinians and the crystallization of a distinct Jordanian identity as a reaction to the developing Palestinian identity. After a brief overview of the events leading up to Black September and the war itself, this paper describes the period of “Jordanization” that the government, the military, and the public sector experienced under Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall. It then discusses the expanding societal divisions of the period immediately following, during which the state restructured itself at the expense of the Jordanians of Palestinian origin. Finally, the paper discusses social manifestations that resulted from the government's construction of a Jordanian national identity, such as the linguistic assimilation of Palestinian males, and the use of the Kafiyyeh to denote ethnic identity and political stances.

Religion and language variation in a convergence area: The view from the border town of Kupwar post-linguistic reorganisation of Indian states

The study focuses on the contemporary ethnolinguistic situation in Kupwar at the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. Gumperz and Wilson (1971)'s classic study of language contact in this village predicted that multilingualism would be maintained as long as the ethnic (i.e. religious) separateness of home life remained important in the contact situation. This paper examines the influence of religion and regional identity on language choices, especially among the newly created linguistic minority communities. The paper suggests that Kupwar is characterised today by both accentuated religious differentiation and growing linguistic assimilation. Present-day patterns of language choice are interpreted in the light of the changed ethno-social context and the perceived role of religious identity in the region.

“Am I Catalan, Mom?”

In Jo tambe soc catalana (2004) [I am Catalan, too], author Najat El Hachmi narrates her arrival as an eight-year-old to the Catalan city of Vic and her process of establishing roots in Catalan society after leaving the rural area surrounding Nador, in northern Morocco. I argue that El Hachmi has conceived of an identity as a border woman that can be read through the theoretical framework developed by the women of color movement in the 1980s and 1990s. El Hachmi turns to her own experience in order to theorize the everyday struggles that she faces in the “in between” spaces of various social and cultural realities. In my argument, her border thinking is inherently political and filters the way she conceives of her Catalan-Amazigh self. I further suggest that El Hachmi’s narrative of a Catalan-Amazigh identity debunks essentialist definitions of Catalan-ness that are narrowly based on linguistic or cultural assimilation into a dominant Catalan identity. I read her border thinking vis-a-vis other voices within Catalanism who, since the 1960s, have defied such a limited view of identity politics in the context of the internal debates about immigration, as well as the definition of Catalan national identity.

Preservation of Minority Languages in North America: French Immersion Programs in the Province of Alberta

Canada, which was officially declared a bilingual nation after the proclamation of the Official Language Act (1969), counts with a low percentage of French speaking population who hardly reaches a quarter of the total population. We must add the fact that there is a very little fraction of the population who speaks French outside the province of Quebec. Social, cultural and ethnic realities which are present within the Canadian territories enable us to observe and investigate the diversity of identities and the different linguistic assimilation processes experienced by non Anglophone citizens. Facts seem to indicate that the francophone minority groups, living in areas of the country where the most spoken language is different from their mother tongue, struggle for the preservation of their cultural heritage at the same time that keep alive their Canadian identity. The possibility of contrasting the situation of the Francophones in Western Canada with the reality of other minority groups which represent a similar percentage with respect to the total population—such as the Germans and the Ukrainian origin citizens—constitutes a valuable resource in order to predict the evolution of the demographic patterns and the use of French as a heritage language within the Canadian territories. The present work reviews the diverse political, linguistic and demographic contexts that may support our idea that using an additional language—French and English in the case of most Francophones in Western Canada—represents an advantage from a cognitive, social and linguistic point of view. The high degree of acceptance of the francophone schools and the popularity of the French immersion programs set up by Albertan authorities are considered within this article in order to support this hypothesis.

Jewish Cultural Heritage in Serbian Literary Tradition

Hajim S. Davico (1854), born into a family which lived for two hudred years in Belgrade, was an influential figure in Serbian political life and the first Jewish writer in Serbian. In his collection of stories From the Bank of the Danube ( Sa Jalije , 1898) he described the life of the Jewish community living below the Dorcol region on the left bank of the Danube, illustrating some contrasts and meeting points of the Serbian and the Jewish cultural heritage. Isak Samokovlija (1889–1950), born in Goražde, graduated in medical studies in Vienna and worked as a general practitioner in Goražde, Fojnica and Sarajevo. In his best short stories “Raphael’s Courtyard” and “Simha” he described moving personal fates of poor Sephardic Jews in Sarajevo. Žak Konfino (1892–1975) was a physician in the Serbian army during the First World War and a German war prisoner during the Second World. In his collections of short stories My Fellow Townsmen (1934) and Both Sides (1936) he described with humorous touches some unexpected turns in the personal lives of the Jewish population in Leskovac. In his short stories under the title 100 years – 90 Pennies (1952) he wrote about the gradual linguistic assimilation of the Jewish population in Leskovac. The tradition of Jewish literature in Serbian finds its richest expression in the works of contemporary Jewish writers like Ivan Ivanji, David Albahari and Eliezer Papo.

“We are Jamaicans. We are Brothers”: History, Brotherhood, and Independence in Kerry Young’s Pao

Kerry Young’s first Novel, Pao, is written in the “voice” of a Chinese Jamaican, a voice that exhibits little if no syntactical or grammatical difference from those with whom he works and lives in the underworld of Chinatown in Kingston, Jamaica. Pao, our central protagonist, arrives to Jamaica in 1938, a time of tremendous social upheaval. The novel charts Pao’s growing political consciousness through his romantic relationships with: the “improper” black prostitute and madam, Gloria Campbell, who is the site of romantic love, and the “proper” Fay Wong, daughter of a grocery store chain owner and link to respectability. This article explores, not so much Pao’s linguistic assimilation, but his acquisition of a language of critique. The novel, I argue, functions as a dialogic interaction of evolving contexts of a public discourse over the representation of independence, the efficacy of rebellion, and “nation.” The China Pao’s family leaves “had become a country that was half feudal and half colonized,” a land that Pao’s father and uncle Zhang fought to wrest from “foreign control” to make China a land that would provide the “ordinary man” with opportunity to fend for himself and have a “decent life” (49). The Jamaica that greets the family is simultaneously a land of possibility and alienation. In the course of the novel, we see Pao as a “fixer,” a protector of women, children, sexual minorities, and local Jamaican businesses. One seminal moment in the novel occurs when he and his friends come to the defense of a Black local fruit cart salesman, who has been attacked by an American, and are called a “chink” and “niggers,” respectively. With his foot literally on the neck of the American, he announces that he is not a “Chink and these boys are not Niggers. We are Jamaicans. We are brothers” (33). This paper explores that which makes the claim “We are Jamaicans. We are brothers” possible.

Language Proficiency among Post-1990 Immigrants in Israel

This paper focuses on the process of linguistic assimilation among post-1990 immigrants arriving in Israel under the Law of Return. We analyse levels of Hebrew proficiency among four immigrant groups (Ethiopia, Former Soviet Union [FSU], Middle Eastern and North African countries [MENA]) and countries in Europe and America [EUAM]) and by language of origin (Amharic, Russian, Spanish, English and French). The analysis is based on a data-set collected by the Central Bureau of Statistics: the post-1990 Immigrant Survey. Controlling for all relevant factors, the data reveal substantial differences across origin groups: immigrants of MENA and EUAM countries have higher probabilities of reporting the highest level of command of the language than their FSU and Ethiopian counterparts. Speakers of Spanish and French attain higher levels of Hebrew proficiency than speakers of Russian, English and Amharic. Apparently, the very existence of a large and residentially concentrated ethnic or linguistic community (as is the case for Ethiopian and FSU immigrants) becomes a potential disincentive for improving their Hebrew skills. The fact that English is a lingua franca understood and prized in Israel explains the slow process of English speakers' language acquisition. The findings are discussed in light of existing theories of linguistic assimilation.

Contribution of KhRILLH to the Study of Modern State of the Khakass Ethnos

In the paper the author observes the role of the Institute in the study of processes taking place among indigenous ethnos of the Republic of Khakassia at the turn of the 20-th - the beginning of the 21-st century is under consideration. In cooperation with institutes RAS and SB RAS some complex researches were held in the region. The author determined the problems of the Khakass people, one important of which is linguistic assimilation. The results of scientists' joint work are published in monographs and books.

Education in Pursuit of the Development Dream? Effects of Schooling on Indigenous Development and Rights in Bolivia

:Education (formal education, schooling) is generally understood as a resource which enables development and leads to the enjoyment of other human rights. In this article, relationships between indigenous education, development and rights are explored. When development is defined as a human right, it aims at improving human rights in general and should not negatively impact them. However in practice, education may produce conflicts in the realisation of indigenous peoples’ individual and collective rights, especially their linguistic and cultural rights, since cultural and linguistic assimilation are often the reported outcomes of indigenous education. This article uses Bolivia as a case study. Since 1994, indigenous peoples’ languages and cultures have to some extent been recognised in the Bolivian education law. Despite this, the implementation of the law has been slow and discontinuous. Arguably, such implementation has not been consistent with indigenous peoples’ cultural and linguistic rights; therefore indigenous peoples’ right to education has not been fully implemented, neither has it produced the expected development or empowerment results.

Linguistic and Religious Diversity and Inclusivity in the Botswana School Curriculum

Botswana, an African country, is characterized by linguistic and religious diversity. To this end, the paper assesses the extent to which the school curriculum accommodates and reflects the country’s linguistic and religious diversity. The paper argues that whilst Botswana’s Vision 2016 calls on the education system to accommodate linguistic diversity, the curriculum does not do so. Through the pursuit of a linguistic assimilation policy, the education system promotes and recognizes only one local language (Setswana), leaving other local languages out of the curriculum. In contrast, the curriculum houses a multi-faith religious education. This brand of religious education is an attempt to accommodate the religious diversity that exists in Botswana. Previously, schools had a mono-faith religious education syllabus. The multi-faith syllabus is considered to be a meaningful way of enabling learners to appreciate religious diversity.

One Country Two Peoples?

This article weighs the demographic evidence for either assimilation or separation among Hong Kong residents who were born in British Colonial Hong Kong or Mainland China. Using successive waves of Hong Kong census data from 1991 to 2011, we show the effects of nativity on four indicators of social distance and differentiation: residential segregation, linguistic assimilation, wage inequality and educational opportunity. On the one hand, there is some evidence of assimilation in terms of residential location and home language. On the other hand, in terms of wage inequality and access to postsecondary education, our findings suggest that Hong Kong's population could become more divided depending upon birthplace.

English

Ethiopia has witnessed a history of language policies ranging from pre-1991 linguistic assimilation to the post-1991 official multilingualism. Though many articles have been written on Ethiopia’s current language policy, little attention has been given to the current policy’s challenges and future consequences. Hence, the intention of this article is to reflect upon challenges and future consequences of the current Ethiopian language policy. Since the concern of language policy in linguistically diverse countries like Ethiopia is fairly complex, this article focuses only on four major issues: bilingualism, rural-urban migration, language policy models and linguistic human rights. These points are first explored on the basis of the existing language policy-related sociolinguistic conceptual frameworks; thereafter the current challenges and a forecast on the potential future consequences of the current Ethiopian language policy are discussed. Taking the three-language model into account, Ethiopia currently lacks a de jury language of interethnic/intergroup communication. The ongoing urbanization, due to a high degree rural-urban migration and the horizontal expansion of metropolitan areas are creating a complex sociolinguistic profile in urban areas, putting citizens’ linguistic human rights at risk. The pre-1991 most prevalent bilingual nature of the society is swiftly shifting and regional monolingualism is on the rise. This trend will predictably turn some regions into linguistic islands and put communication at cross regional and national level at risk. The unfolding sociolinguistic dynamics calls for urgent language policy rethinking in Ethiopia. Key words: National language, symmetric multilingualism, exoglossic language policy.

Spanish proficiency, cultural knowledge, and identity of Mormon returned missionaries

This article examines the linguistic skills, cultural knowledge, and assimilation of students who have completed a Spanish-language mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a population that attains a high level of fluency in a second language. The results of a written survey completed by 103 students who had served Spanish-language missions are described. These students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses resemble those of heritage language learners, while their motivation and cultural understanding are more similar to those of traditional foreign language students. Although these students lived in the target culture for an extended period of time and many attained a high level of linguistic proficiency, their awareness of cultural issues and ability to articulate them were limited. It seems that certain attributes of the Hispanic culture may have become ingrained in the students’ personalities nonetheless.

The social and symbolic aspects of languages in the narratives of young (prospective) migrants

When talking about language in the context of research regarding children and migration, the focus tends to be on proficiency in the receiving country's language as an indicator of successful integration and/or for its role in educational achievement. This article explores the social and symbolic aspects of language in the narratives of young Ghanaian migrants to Italy at several levels: that of global hierarchies of power as expressed through the prestige offered by different languages; that of the expectations for linguistic assimilation and linguistic maintenance which centre around migrant children; and that of young people's challenging of adult rules through the instrumental use of different languages.

Church-Based ESL Adult Programs

This multi-sited ethnographic study examines the ways in which Latino and Asian immigrant parents’ English learning through two church-based ESL programs in a Southeastern U.S. city affects their family literacy and home language practices. It demonstrates that the parents’ participation in the programs is an empowering experience promoting ESL acquisition and funds of knowledge, which in turn advances their family literacy. This study also finds that the programs do not promote linguistic assimilation, devalue or erase immigrant parents’ home language. Instead, they facilitate the parents to reclaim their home language and support children’s home language development. The “family literacy ecology of communities” framework is proposed in this study. It indicates that church-based ESL programs as social mediators for situating immigrant adult English learners within real-life communities, empowering their family literacy, accessing communities of power, and having a voice in the larger society. Implications for ESL adult programs and future studies are presented.