Linguistic Enclaves Research Articles

Linguistic Enclaves, Sorting, and Language Skills of Immigrants

The literature argues that linguistic enclaves negatively affect immigrants’ language proficiency by reducing their exposure and incentives to learn destination language. This negative association may, however, be spurious, arising due to the self-selection of immigrants into regions with larger enclaves. Exploiting the natural experiment of the German residential policy, this paper analyses the influence of linguistic enclaves on refugees’ language proficiency. We find no evidence that enclaves hamper German language learning among refugees. Our results are robust to various measurements and model specifications. We conclude that the negative relationship reported in previous research is mainly driven by immigrant’s residential sorting.

Phonetic stability across time: Linguistic enclaves in Switzerland

The present paper shows results of a proof-of-concept study on two historically related but geographically separated dialects of Swiss German. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, speakers of Valais German (southwestern Switzerland) emigrated to the southeastern part of the country, forming so-called Sprachinseln (enclaves) of Valais German in a Romansh-speaking area. Using an online survey, we collected responses from 300+ participants from the cantons of Valais and Grisons to examine how the two dialects have developed over time. Results suggest stability on the phonetic level, i. e. the two dialects still sound very similar despite having been geographically separated for 800 years. The morphosyntax and lexicon, however, exhibit substantial change. We discuss historic and sociodemographic factors that may explain these patterns.

Linguistic Barriers to Immigrants’ Labor Market Integration in Italy

This article investigates whether and to what extent poor proficiency in Italian impairs immigrants’ labor market integration in Italy. Using individual-level survey data, we apply instrumental variables methods to leverage presumably exogenous variations in Italian proficiency induced by immigrants’ demo-linguistic characteristics (e.g., age at arrival, linguistic distance between mother tongue and destination language, speaking Italian during childhood) and their interplays. We find that, given the low-skill nature of Italy's immigrant labor market, poor proficiency in communication skills (speaking and understanding Italian) produces larger penalties for immigrants’ labor force participation and employment than does the lack of formal skills (reading and writing). In contrast, no effect is found on immigrants’ job characteristics like the type of contract and full-time or part-time work. Whereas female immigrants were more penalized than males by poor linguistic proficiency in labor force participation, immigrants in linguistic groups that were more likely to work with (for) co-nationals were less affected by linguistic barriers than other immigrant groups. Yet, when investigating perceived integration outcomes, immigrants working with (for) co-nationals fared worse on feeling at home, feeling accepted, and overall life satisfaction in Italy. As our analysis shows, linguistic enclaves in workplaces, while not always representing a hurdle to immigrants’ labor market success, can generate trade-offs for other non-labor market integration outcomes. These findings highlight that the development of linguistic skills should be prioritized in migration policy agendas, taking into account heterogeneity in immigrants’ demographic and linguistic profiles.

Language Policy and Language Situation in Dynamics: Pomaks of Northern Greece

The paper comes up with a synchronous-diachronic analysis of the linguistic situation in one of the isolated cultural and linguistic enclaves of the Balkan Peninsula: the district of Xanthi in the region of Thrace in Northern Greece, on the Bulgarian-Greek border. Here, in a remote mountainous area, live Muslim Slavs, ethnic Bulgarians, representing a minority ethnolinguistic and cultural-confessional group that has existed for a long time in a foreign language and other religious environment among Orthodox Greeks. In the historical past, this community formed a single whole with the Muslim Bulgarians who now live within the boundaries of the Republic of Bulgaria. This minority is the object of the language and cultural policy of three states: Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. Note that the Greek authorities for a long time 1920s–1990s (excluding the period of Bulgarian rule in 1941–1944) pursued a policy of de-Bulgarization of this population. As a result, today the degree of its Turkicization (due to the influence of Islam, the study of the Koran in Turkish and the active position of Turkey) is quite high. It should be noted that the Bulgarian-speaking communities in Northern Greece are not the object of the Bulgarian language policy, which is carried out by disinterested officials and politicians who ignore the opinions and assessments of Bulgarian dialectologists and sociolinguists. The study focuses on ethnonyms and exonyms as important factors in the formation of the Pomaks' linguistic identity: the self-name of the speakers of these dialects is Pomaks, Ahryans. The ethnonym Pomaks was introduced and continues to be actively used to discuss the new Greek policy towards the Bulgarian-speaking population of Greece; the linguonym Pomaks was also formed from it. Earlier in Greece, the term Slavophones ('speakers of the Slavic language') was used, cf. new pomakophones. In the 90s of the 20th century and early 21th century a number of scientists (V. Friedman, A. D. Dulichenko, A. Ioannidou, K. Voss, M. Nomati, M. Henzelmann, K. Steinke) considered Pomak to be one of the literary microlanguages of the southern Slavia, noting that it is characterized by the diversity of the script used and poor functionality. There were appropriate grounds for this (codification, publication of dictionaries and grammar, textbooks, etc.). But the impetus for the “creation” of the literary language of the Pomaks was the political task of the country's leadership. At present, Pomak (Southern Rodhopian, Bulgarian) dialects in Greece have an unwritten character (they are used exclusively for oral communication in the family and village, microsociety). Despite the presence of certain signs of the formation of the literary language among the Pomaks, the modern language situation and language policy do not contribute to its existence and functioning. We rely on both published sources and our own field materials collected during two ethnolinguistic expeditions carried out in 2018 and 2019, as well as online in 2021, and will try to present preliminary results of the study of the current state of the language and language policy. Let us note the importance of modern interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the phenomenon of intercultural communication, which are based on the dialogue of languages and cultures, and which necessitated the description of new linguistic conditions and consideration of the importance of not so much Greek as Turkish as a means of intra — and interethnic communication in the specific genre.

In Any Case No Upper Palatinate Dialect

This article investigates important factors concerning the urban identity of the inhabitants of Regensburg and their linguistic manifestation. In interviews with citizens of Regensburg five characteristic factors emerged, which lead to the core factor, the popular idea of Regensburg as a linguistic enclave of the Middle Bavarian dialect surrounded by North Bavarian. The article shows how this idea became part of the cultural memory in Regensburg.

Language skill acquisition in immigrant social networks: Evidence from Australia

This paper estimates the effect of linguistic enclaves on one of the most important determinants of both the economic and social integration of immigrants: language skills. Using longitudinal survey data, I find that enclave size significantly impedes language acquisition. I confirm the robustness of the results by exploiting an unusually rich set of variables to generate lower bounds on the effect of enclaves. The impact of linguistic concentration is particularly strong for women, younger immigrants, and those in the middle of the ability distribution. Enclaves are unrelated to language course take-up, suggesting that they affect language learning via social interactions among friends and colleagues rather than through formal education.

“Do I want to learn a language spoken by two million people?”

Abstract Migrants’ intended length of stay influences their choices between using a lingua franca, language technology, ad-hoc interpreters and translators, intercomprehension, or learning the host country’s dominant language. To study this influence, data were collected through a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and a focus-group discussion from 15 long-term migrants (university language teachers) and eight mid-term migrants (teachers at two international schools) working in Slovenia. The results show that the long-term migrants all learned the host language, while the most common mediation strategy of the mid-term migrants was use of a lingua franca. Ad-hoc interpreters and translators were used not only in healthcare but also for the translations of official documents. Moreover, the French-speaking mid-term migrants attempted to learn the host language and often ended up learning English, while the group of native English speakers tended to form a linguistic enclave. It is argued that the preferred mediation strategy depends not just on the intended length of stay but also on the status of the migrant’s L1 in the particular host country.

Magical Materialism: On the Hidden Danger of Repatriation Disputes

Magical Materialism: On the Hidden Danger of Repatriation Disputes

Ethnic Identity and Language Variations of the Russian Germans in the Kirov Region

Currently, the process of globalization, intense intercultural contacts, changes in social structure, and internationalization of higher education influence inter-ethnic relations, ethnic identity, as well as language changes. These processes can be observed among the Russian-Germans living in the territory of the Kirov region. Their investigation started in 1999 and is currently going on. The relevance of the study is due to the significance of the linguistic interaction at the present stage of the German language development in Russia, where for decades the German language has been developing and changing in linguistic enclaves environment. In this regard, this paper aims to explore ethnic and linguistic identity of German bilinguals living in the environment of a foreign language, different dialect, or different confession in isolation from the main ethnic array. The leading methods in the study were socio-differentiated analysis, as well as comparative and statistical methods used while correlating the dialect systems under review to other German dialectal systems, literary German language, as well as with the Russian language. In the study, we came to the conclusion that the priority layer in the structure of the ethnic identity of Russian Germans in the Kirov region includes the following distinctive features: common territory, language, religion, family life, folklore, crafts, norms of behavior, common historical destiny and common psychological makeup. The language of the German ethnic minority, who live in the territory of the Kirov region, is unique and peculiar. It is characterized, above all, by mixed dialects in a foreign language environment and by a variety of their existing forms of. The paper is of practical value to scholars dealing with the German island dialects.

A similarity‐based cross‐language comparison of basicness and demarcation of “blue” terms

AbstractTo investigate linguistic and perceptual boundaries within the “blue” region of the color gamut, we analyzed sorting data from speakers of six languages who sorted color stimuli by similarity. Two of these languages, Russian and Italian, are thought to have a separate basic color term and category for “light blue,” distinguishing it from “blue,” and the third was English, which lacks this distinction. There has been less study of the possible basicness of “light blue” terms in the other three languages: Lithuanian and Estonian (both spoken in Baltic states) and Udmurt (a linguistic enclave in North Russia). Sorting data from each sample of speakers were analyzed with principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling, reducing them to a pattern of interstimulus similarities. In addition, color‐naming data were collected for five of the languages and confirmed that sorting responses were not simply a reflection of the words used by subjects to label the stimuli. A “clustering index” was created, quantifying the extent of light/dark blue separation and the strength of any category boundary between them; this was low for English‐language participants but high for Russian and Italian. Udmurt and Lithuanian values were also high, whereas Estonian responses were closer to English. Thus, when clustering of blue stimuli is used as an additional indicator of basicness, the results are compatible with earlier evidence that “light blue” is a separate basic color category in Russian and Italian, and further indicate that light blue terms are basic in Udmurt and Lithuanian, but not Estonian. It may be that “blue” categories are especially susceptible to splitting into two under the influence of linguistic contact. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 362–377, 2017

Oriental Medical Discourse as a Referential Enclave

Korean Oriental Medicine has unequal access to some common linguistic resources that it shares with biomedicine under the dual medical system. At the societal level, the biomedical linguistic hegemonies allow biomedicine to unmark its entities, while mark Oriental ones with han- ‘Korean,’ as the prequel to the present study (Kim 2015c) illustrates. However, there has been little research that investigates the unmarking norms at the (intra-)institutional level of Oriental consultations in reference to those within the discourse of Oriental medicine itself. Noting the gap in research, the present study explores the Oriental interactions that are apparently immune to the societally imposed (un)marking norms and investigates the types, distributions, and meanings (in particular, referential specificity) of the unmarked references to Oriental entities. To do so, it qualitatively analyzes selections from a data set of 15-hour-long naturally-occurring consultations between Oriental doctors and their patients. The findings demonstrate that Oriental interactions frequently form a linguistic enclave, the intra-institutional norms within which regulate that the references to Oriental doctors, clinics, and medications be unmarked. Within the enclave, the unmarked uysas make a reference to a generic Oriental doctor or doctors, while the unmarked first-mention sensayngnim, albeit a rare example, to a specific Oriental doctor (more specifically, the chief doctor). The unmarked first-mention pyengwens, mostly disambiguated by the proximal deictic expressions, refer to the specific Oriental institutions at which the interactions are in progress. The unmarked first-mention yaks refer to specific Oriental medications, whereas the unmarked to a generic one. The apparent contradiction between the findings of the present study and those of the prequel is not surprising at all, but rather is indicative of the very “heteroglossia” (Bakhtin 1984) under the dual medical system in Korea. That is, the references to either of the medicines under the dual system can go unmarked while abiding by a respective set of the referential norms, albeit at different levels: one at the intra-institutional level and the other at the inter-institutional and societal level. Their distributions are also discussed on qualitative and ethnographic terms.

The Role of Language in Shaping International Migration

This paper examines the importance of language in international migration from multiple angles by studying the role of linguistic proximity, widely spoken languages, linguistic enclaves and language-based immigration policy requirements. To this aim we collect a unique dataset on immigration flows and stocks in 30 OECD destinations from all world countries over the period 1980-2010, and construct a set of linguistic proximity measures. Migration rates increase with linguistic proximity and with English at destination. Softer linguistic requirements for naturalization and larger linguistic communities at destination encourage more migrants to move. Linguistic proximity matters less when local linguistic network are larger.

Estonian linguistic enclaves on the territory of the former Russian Empire: contacts with local languages

In the 19th century, the emigration of Estonians gathered momentum and Estonian villages were founded on the vast territory of the Russian Empire. Having survived over several generations, these native Estonian-speaking villages can be considered linguistic enclaves outside their homeland. This article will give an overview of research expeditions into Estonian villages in Siberia and the Far East in the 1980s and 1990s. Initially, we treated the linguistic enclaves as a continuation of the map of Estonian dialects, hoping to find in the foreign-language(s) surrounded and isolated Estonian language features which, primarily as a result of the influence of standard Estonian, have disappeared from the dialects of homeland Estonia. In our further studies, we have taken into account developments in modern linguistics: whether to place emphasis on the original (authentic) or on developmental changes. In terms of language influences, we cannot forget contacts with local and regional languages.Kokkuvõte. Jüri Viikberg: Eesti keelesaared omaaegse Tsaari-Venemaa aladel: kontaktid kohalike keeltega. Eestlaste väljaränne kodumaalt saavutas haripunkti 19. sajandil, mil eesti külasid rajati Vene impeeriumis Krimmi poolsaarest kuni Jaapani mereni. Tänapäevani säilinud eesti külades on emakeel kasutusel ka järglaspõlvkondades ja neid saab vaadelda eesti keelesaartena väljaspool emamaad. Et aladel, kuhu Tsaari-Venemaa poliitika eesti koloniste suunas, on elanud paljusid eri rahvaid, siis on artiklis jälgitud võimalikke keelekontakte kohalike keeltega piirkondade kaupa (Krimm, Taga-Kaukaasia, Lääne- ja Ida-Siber, Kaug-Ida). Keelematerjali põhjal võib väita, et kohalike (põlis)rahvaste keeltest on eestlased oma keelekasutusse võtnud eeskätt kohanimesid ning mõningal määral ka toidu, riietuse ja kohaliku elu-oluga seotud sõnavara.Märksõnad: eesti keel, eesti keelesaared, keelekontaktid, Kaukaasia eestlased, Krimmi eestlased, Siberi eestlased, Venemaa eestlased

International Migration and the Economics of Language

This paper provides a review of the research on the ‘economics of language' as applied to international migration. Its primary focuses are on: (1) the effect of the language skills of an individual on the choice of destination among international (and internal) migrants, both in terms of the ease of obtaining proficiency in the destination language and access to linguistic enclaves, (2) the determinants of destination language proficiency among international migrants, based on a model (the three E's) of Exposure to the destination language in the origin and destination, Efficiency in the acquisition of destination language skills, and Economic incentives for acquiring this proficiency, (3) the consequences for immigrants of acquiring destination language proficiency, with an emphasis on labor market outcomes, and in particular earnings. Factors that are considered include age, education, gender, family structure, costs of migration, linguistic distance, duration in the destination, return migration, and ethnic enclaves, among others. Analyses are reported for the immigrant experiences in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, Israel and Spain.

Grammatografie des Zimbrischen.

Eberhard Kranzmayer’s and Bruno Schweizer’s grammars of the Cimbrian dialects of German linguistic enclaves in Italy offer two rather different descriptions from the first half of the twentieth century of the same linguistic varieties. Kranzmeyer, in a highly structured portrayal, emphasises the results of regular sound changes, while Schweizer quotes many more individual linguistic forms and portrays much greater variation. This article compares the two descriptions specifically with reference to several archaic phonetic and morphological peculiarities of Cimbrian. While Kranzmayer’s grammar is the more reliable from a diachronic perspective, the variation registered by Schweizer is typical of varieties such as Cimbrian, which are becoming moribund in previously bilingual communities, and in some cases even permits diachronic interpretations which transcend Kranzmayer’s more neogrammarian perspective. The differing linguistic findings of the two scholars derive from their different approaches to dialectology and Germanic philology.

Das "Einheitskomitee der historischen deutschen Sprachinseln in Italien"

This brief article outlines the history, actual situation and legal background of the historic German linguistic enclaves situated in the Italian regions of Aosta, Piedmont, Trentino-South Tyrol, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It focuses on the emergence and the activities of the Unity Committee, founded in 2001, which serves as an umbrella organisation to a number of cultural associations based in the various historic German linguistic enclaves.

Lexical Relations between Salaca Livonian and Estonian Dialects

The present study is based on the Salaca Livonian dictionary compiled by Eberhard Winkler and Karl Pajusalu (Winkler, Pajusalu 2009), which assembles the vocabulary of all the Salaca Livonian sources. The Salaca Livonian dialect, which is a major variety of Livonian alongside Courland Livonian, was spoken in the vicinity of the river Salaca in northern Latvia until the mid-19th century. These areas were in direct contact with the areas of the Haademeeste and Saarde subdialects of the southern group of the western dialect of North Estonian and the western dialects of South Estonian. The present study focuses on lexical relations between Salaca Livonian and its contact dialects as well as with the Estonian dialect area in general and makes an atttempt to explain what the vocabulary shared by Salaca Livonian and Estonian dialects could reveal about the development of Livonian. The closeness of lexical relations is established by means of a dialectometrical study, where at first the closeness of relations is calculated on the basis of the entire shared vocabulary, followed by closeness on the basis of infrequent and frequent vocabulary. The quantitative findings serve as the basis of a diachronic study of lexical relations between Salaca Livonian and the Estonian dialects. When taking into account the entire shared vocabulary, the links between Salaca Livonian and the southernmost South-Estonian dialects prove to be the strongest; however, the links between Salaca Livonian and western South-Estonian and West-Estonian subdialects rise to prominence as well. Analysis of less common vocabulary highlights the relation between Salaca Livonian and South Estonian even more; in the case of frequent words there is, in addition to South Estonian, a positive correlation with the insular dialects. All the three analyses show the closest link between the vocabulary of Salaca Livonian and the South-Estonian Leivu linguistic enclave.

GERMAN LANGUAGE AND GERMAN IDENTITY IN AMERICA: EVIDENCE FROM SCHOOL GRAMMARS 1860–19181

ABSTRACTOne of our jobs as ‘AuslandsgermanistInnen’ is to promote an understanding of German culture in the home community. In our particular case, in the UK, this involves teaching a language and concepts which are – at least on the surface – fairly foreign to the target audience. How does the transmission of cultural and linguistic knowledge take place between motherland and linguistic enclaves? This paper will address this question with regard to the retention and loss of German culture and language by recent and settled immigrants in America at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In particular, evidence from German school grammars printed in the USA will be examined to investigate what kind of cultural references were taught to school children.

Segregation of Migrants Groups in Pune City, India

This is an attempt to study formation of a linguistic enclave in Pune city. Pune is rapidly growing million city of India. This growth is largely due to contribution made by migration. People have come from all the states of the Indian Union. Among the states the first five contributors were Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan. Migrants from different states, prefer to stay together for security, cultural affinity and to retain the identity. Hence an effort is made to demarcate and study the enclave formed by the migrants. To identify the enclave, a city survey map was used.

L'Alguer (Alghero), a Catalan linguistic enclave in Sardinia

This article presents a linguistic and sociolinguistic description of l'Alguer (Alghero), a Catalan linguistic enclave in Sardinia (Italy). Within the framework of linguistic-enclave research, the linguistic, geographic, historical, and political specifics of Alghero are presented, along with local dynamics involving multilingualism, heteroglossia, and linguistic hybridization. The relationship between codes (mainly Catalan, Sardinian, and Italian), local language ideologies and identities, as well as macrosociolinguistic data, suggests an ongoing process of language shift, with both bottom-up and top-down policies of language maintenance developing in response. The point of view adopted here is Catalan, rather than Italian, highlighting the relationship of the local dialect “Algherese” with its homeland Catalan speech area and the Catalan speech community. The Italian political context is considered to the extent that it bears on the current linguistic status and likely prospects of Algherese, and reference is made to other linguistic enclaves in Italy, but no full comparative inquiry is intended.