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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1085

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The transitional generation: a border group in language shift

Authors: Ravindranath, Maya
Submitted by: Ravindranath, Maya (University of New Hampshire, United States of America)

Recent scholarship in sociolinguistics has encouraged a focus on border groups (e.g. Llamas 2010). Although in many cases this research focuses on speech communities across tangible physical or political borders, the definition has expanded to include more abstract social border groups, where “identity is fluid, complex, and emergent in social interaction.” (Borders and Identities 2010). This paper describes the particular characteristics of one such group in a small, multilingual Garifuna-, English-, and Belizean Creole (BC)-speaking community in Belize, arguing that the middle generation (ages 30-50) in this community is a type of social border group, as is any intermediate generation in a community undergoing language shift.

The data come from an apparent time analysis (Sankoff 2006) of two phonological changes in progress and qualitative analysis of language attitudes in the village, following work such as McCarty et al (2006). Interview data show that this generation straddles the boundary between recognizing BC, the national lingua franca, as a legitimate language and using it in multiple domains (as their children do) or considering it an illegitimate code and refusing knowledge of it (as their parents do). With respect to an externally-motivated sound change due to contact with BC, speakers of this generation show a far greater range of variation than the older or younger age groups, in effect straddling a boundary between BC- and Garifuna-dominance. In contrast, with regard to an internal change in progress, only the men of this generation exhibit unusual behavior when compared to the rest of the community – behavior that I argue is an assertion of their Garifuna identity in reaction to social and linguistic shifts taking place in the community. As such, variation in the language reflects dynamism in the community. This study highlights the fact that not all socio-linguistic factors are unidirectionally pointing toward the loss of Garifuna in Hopkins. Instead, we see changes progressing in a fashion akin to those in healthy languages, as well as attitudes that seem to support language maintenance, alongside structural convergence of the type that often accompanies language shift. If 90% of the world’s languages are destined to become endangered in the next century (Krauss 1992), it is of particular importance that we examine closely the variation inherent in endangered indigenous languages. In sum, an understanding of the special motivations of the transitional generation may inform an analysis of the complex internal and external sociolinguistic pressures on minority languages in cases of incipient language shift.

Borders and Identities 2010 Conference: http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb/bic2010/

Krauss, M. (1992). The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68(1): 4-24.

Llamas, C. (2010). Convergence and divergence across a national border. In Llamas, C. & Watt, D. (eds.). Language and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 227-236.

McCarty, T., Romero, M., and Zepeda, O. (2006). Reclaiming the Gift: Indigenous Youth Counter-Narratives on Native Language Loss and Revitalization. American Indian Quarterly 30 (1&2): 28-48.

Sankoff, G. (2006). Age: Apparent time and real time. Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition. Article Number: LALI: 01479