Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 400
Part of Session 180: New Speakers in the City (Other abstracts in this session)
Geographical shifts and linguistic changes: ‘new’ or ‘urban’ speakers of minority languages
Authors: Hornsby, Michael
Submitted by: Hornsby, Michael (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, Poland)
For many language revitalisers and revivalists, ‘the price of original–language retention is geographical and cultural isolation’ (Edwards 2010: 11). We cannot of course turn back the clock and reproduce the times and the conditions when many current seriously endangered languages experienced their golden ages – demographically speaking – but attempts at language planning for minority languages have sought to shear up those geographical territories where the language is (or increasingly, recently was) the majority community language locally. See, for example, Ó Giollagáin et al (2007) for recommendations for preserving the Gaeltacht in Ireland or Aitchison and Carter (1991) for the importance of Y Fro Gymraeg (The Welsh Heartland), both demographically and ideologically, in attempts to preserve and extend the use of Welsh as a spoken medium.
This paper examines revitalisation scenarios in three minority languages (Welsh in Wales, Breton in Brittany [France] and Yiddish as a non-territorial but increasingly standardised language), using the framework employed by Myhill (1999) to differentiate two conflicting ideologies (territorial and personality-based) which have influenced planning for many currently endangered minority languages. Alternatives to rural, historical forms of these languages need to be considered as well and in this paper, I contend that individualistic and non-traditional approaches to language maintenance/revitalisation, increasingly located in an urban environment, need to be analysed and appreciated as much as traditional, community-based, rural ones.