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ТҮРКІСТАН 2024
 № 5 Дәріс тақырыбы: LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND SHIFT
Лекцияның мақсаты мен міндеттері:
1. Language Maintenance and Shift
2. Language Death and Language Loss
3. Factors Contributing to Language Shift
Лекция мазмұны:
1. Language Maintenance and Shift
Language shift is the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of
communication and socialization within a community. In an effort to understand the factors that
contribute to language shift and those which seem to militate against it, this chapter explores
several immigrant and non-immigrant contexts around the world, with particular focus on the
United States. The principal factors—divided into individual, family, community, and broader
societal factors—are often interdependent. The discussion also notes the basic tenet emphasized
by Fishman (1991) that language maintenance must involve intergenerational transmission of the
language. If intergenerational transmission of a language ceases, it can be said that the speakers
have shifted to another language. Many of the world’s 6000 to 7000 languages are being lost—
by some estimates, up to half of them—mostly due to the spread of a few dominant languages,
which many speakers are shifting to.
Language shift and maintenance constitute a cluster of phenomena concerning aspects of
language dynamics. Even though communities’ linguistic codes are in a constant process of
change in general, language shift presupposes stressful socio-historical conditions in order to
take place. Linguistic shift is the replacement of one or more languages in a community’s
repertoire by a language which is socially more powerful. Efforts made by inside agents as well
as outside institutions and authorities to preserve a language or a dialect constituting the
particular community’s local vernacular are called language maintenance. It is argued here that
linguistic shift is a processual outcome of both outside forces stemming from regional, national,
and global conditions as well as locally determined agencies. Language shift, thus, is a form of
social praxis intimately involving speakers of the receding language(s) as well as factors and
parameters originating in the wider, embedding society. Among the most important factors
which are instrumental in both shift and maintenance are what are understood as linguistic
ideologies. In language shift, in particular, both structural and functional aspects of language
change should be examined. Thus, shifting vernaculars are structurally affected in various
degrees in respect of their lexical, grammatical, and phonological resources, whereas their
functional-pragmatic roles are transformed in a dialectic with the expanding social role and use
of the dominant language. In the study of language shift and maintenance we are called to answer
important questions concerning science, on the one hand, and questions related to the needs of
human communities, on the other.
The study of language shift and maintenance constitutes a central focus of contemporary
linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. Even though some of its central aspects have a
rather long history in the field of study known as language, culture, and society, in the most
recent research agenda interest in linguistic shift and maintenance has touched on almost all
crucial areas of the study of dynamic language phenomena. It engages a focus on both linguistic
structure and linguistic praxis, including language ideologies, discourse and interaction, micro-
as well as macro-sociological parameters, issues relating the self and society to global concerns,
and a feedback between what communities understand as their sociolinguistic condition and
what scholars, academics, and various institutional sources of authority perceive as shift and
maintenance.
2. Language Death and Language Loss
It has been estimated that more than half of the world’s languages have dis-appeared in
the last 500 years (Sasse 1990). Of the remaining 6,809 languages listed in the latest printed
edition of the Ethnologue (Grimes 2000) more than half are believed to be in danger of
disappearing in the present century. Ac-cording to one pessimistic view, only 600 languages
stand a fair chance of surviving in the long run (Krauss 1992). The conclusion is inescapable:
languages are dying at an alarming rate all over the world. Leaving aside such cases as restricted
languages (otherwise dead languages used exclusively in restricted domains, e.g. liturgical
languages such as Latin, Coptic or Ge‛ez) and residual languages (otherwise lost languages
preserved in isolated words, phrases, songs or sayings to mark group membership, particularly in
minority groups), a language is dead when it no longer has any speakers. Language death is
defined by Campbell as “the loss of a language due to gradual shift to the dominant language in
language contact situations” (1994:1961).1 Such situations involve an intermediate stage of
bilingualism in which the subordinate language is employed by a decreasing number of speakers
in an equally decreasing number of contexts, until it ultimately disappears altogether. The
process is typically accompanied by a gradual attrition of the subordinate language along a
continuum determined mainly by age (although attitude and other factors may play an important
part). Languages in the process of dying are endangered languages. Wurm (this volume)
distinguishes five levels of language endangerment. A language is potentially endangered if the
children start preferring the dominant language and learn the obsolescing language imperfectly.
It is endangered if the young- est speakers are young adults and there are no or very few child
speakers. It is seriously endangered if the youngest speakers are middle-aged or past middle age.
It is terminally endangered or moribund if there are only a few elderly speakers left. A language
is dead when there are no speakers left at all. The factors determining language death are
typically “non-linguistic” (Swadesh 1948:235). A long list of such factors can be found in
Campbell (1994:1963). The most commonly cited are socioeconomic and sociopolitical.
Socioeconomic factors include lack of economic opportunities, rapid economic transformations,
on-going industrialization, work patterns, migrant labor, resettlement, migration and so on.
Among the sociopolitical factors are official language policies, discrimination, stigmatization,
repression, war etc. Official language policies can be and have been a particularly decisive factor
in language death. Western colonialism has proven extremely efficient in this respect, as can be
gathered from the use of the term “glottophagie” in Calvet (1974). An-other term frequently
encountered in this context is “linguicide”, a concept analogous to genocide (Skuttnab-Kangas &
Phillipson 1996:2212). The classic example is the “English Only” policy of the United States
government in the 19th century, designed to force Native Americans to learn English (still
echoing in the “English Only” amendment adopted in 1988 in Arizona and the proposed
“English Only” bill in Utah). Many modern parallels can be adduced, such as the repression of
Kurdish in Turkey, Albanian in Kosovo or Aromanian in Greece.2 The official status of
languages crossing borders may vary according to the statutory laws of the various countries.
According to the biblical story of the tower of Babel, the whole world had at one time
“one language and a common speech” (Genesis 11. 1). When man tried to build a tower that
would reach to the heavens, God decided to “confuse the language of the whole world” and to
“scatter the people over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11. 8). The peoples that eventually
spread out over the earth after the flood were named after Noah’s sons: the Japhethites, the
Hamites and the Semites (Gen. 10. 1-32). The historical reality behind the story can of course
be seriously questioned, as well as the rough correspondency with the Indo-European
(“Japhethic”) and Afroasiatic (Hamito-Semitic) language families. Yet even a quick glance at the
number of extinct Indo-European and Afroasiatic languages should suffice to give an impression
of the extent of language death in ancient times. Among these are a number of major literary
languages such as Akkadian, Ugaritic, Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Aramaic, Ancient Egyptian and
the Ancient Greek dialects. Other languages are less well-known such as the following from the
Indo-European language family: Pahlavi, Sogdian, Khorasmian, Khotanese Saka and
Tumshuqese (Middle Iranian), Luwian, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian, Carian, Sidetic and Pisidian
(Anatolian), Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Paelignian, Marrucinian, Vestinian, Venetic and South
Picene (Italic), Gaulish, Lepontic and Celtiberian (Celtic), Thracian and Dacian, Illyrian and
Messapic, Phrygian, Ancient Macedonian and still others. All of these are known from written
tes-timonies, but other extinct languages are known by name only and probably even more are
not and will never be known at all. One of the better-known linguistic “killing fields” is Asia
Minor (Janse 2002:347-359). Practically all the indigenous languages of Asia Minor became
extinct under the pressure of Hellenization: Hatti, Hurrian, Hittite and the other Anatolian
languages, Phrygian, Galatian, Gothic, and a number of other lan-guages known by name only
such as Mysian, Lycaonian, Cataonian, Cilician, Bagdaonian and Cappadocian.3 The prestige of
a politically and culturally su-perior lingua franca was such that in the Persian Empire of the
Achaemenids Greek language and even constitutional forms were adopted by satraps such as
Ariarathes I of Cappadocia and Mausolus of Caria (both 4th c. BC). Hellenism was used by the
Romans to impose their own authority in Asia Minor.
The linguistic differences between dying languages and mixed languages are important.
Dying languages generally exhibit morphological and syntactic reduction (Dressler 1988:184-
188; Campbell 1994:1962-1963), whereas mixed languages, with the notable exception of
pidgins and creoles, generally retain and often combine the complexities of the source
languages.6 Language death, in other words, is normally characterized by attrition, leaving in the
final stages only “forgetters” and “rememberers” (Campbell 1994:1960-1961).7 Needless to say,
the degree of attrition will have serious consequences for the description of the language,
especially if it has never been described before.
Although language death is not new, its study is fairly recent. Apart from pioneering
works like Cust (1899), Vendryes (1933; 1951; 1954), Swadesh (1948), Terracini (1951),
Ellenberger (1962) and Pande (1965), language death started drawing serious attention in the
1970s, culminating in a special issue of IJSL (Dressler & Wodak-Leodolter 1977), the first and
definitely not the last collective volume on the subject. The 1980s witnessed the start of a
veritable explosion of workshops, conferences and publications on language death, in-cluding a
recent encyclopedia of endangered languages (Moseley 2001), a spe-cialist journal to be
published by Mouton de Gruyter and the first “popular” books on the subject (Crystal 2000;
Hagège 2000).
3. Factors Contributing to Language Shift
1. Define language shift and language death/loss?
Language shift is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to
speaking another language. It is also known as language transfer and language replacement.
Language death or loss is the end or extinction of a language. It is also called language
extinction in which the last native speaker has died.
2. What are the factors contributing to language shift?
Factors contributing to language shift are economic, social and political factors;
demographic factors; and attitudes and values.
The economic factor: Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning
another language. In English-dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in order to
get good jobs. This results in bilingualism. The high demand from industries for employees
with fluent English has successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English.
In fact, being competent in English leads to well-paid jobs.
Social factor: Language shift occurs when the community sees no reason to take active
steps to maintain their ethnic language. When a community of speakers moving to a region or
country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language.
Every time an immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to
children in place of the old country language. For example, when a migrant minority group
moves to a predominately monolingual society dominated by one majority group language in all
the major institutional domains – school, TV, radio, newspaper, government administration,
courts, work – language shift will be unavoidable unless the community takes active steps to
prevent it.
Political factor: A rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to ‘get on’ in a society
where knowledge of the second language is a prerequisite for success.
Demographic factor: Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in
urban areas because rural groups tend to be isolated from the centres of political power for
longer. The rural people can meet most of their social needs in the ethnic or minority language.
For example, Ukrainians in Canada who live out of town on farms have maintained their ethnic
language better than those in the towns because of their relative social isolation.
 Attitudes and values: Language shift tends to be slower among communities where the
minority language is highly valued. When the minority group support the use of the minority
language in a variety of domains, it helps them to resist the pressure from the majority group to
switch to the majority group language.
3. How can a minority language be maintained?
If the minority language is considered an important symbol of a minority group’s
identity, the language is likely to be maintained longer. For example, Polish people have
regarded language as very important for preserving their identity in the many countries they have
migrated to, and they have consequently maintained Polish for three to four generations. The
language also can be maintained if families from a minority group live near each other and see
each other frequently or if they have a frequent contact with their homeland.
4. What is language revival and how is a language revived?
Language revival is when people try to make a language that is not spoken or is spoken
very little, spoken more often again. While language death is what happens when a language is
not used by the people who spoke it before. Thus, language revival wants to save a language
that is dead or endangered.
The language can be revived through television channel or bilingual education program.
The bilingual education programmes start from preschool to tertiary level. An effective bilingual
schooling has generally involved a process known as ‘immersion’. Children are immersed in the
language and it is used to teach them science, maths and social studies, for instance. They are
not ‘taught’ the language. It is used as a medium of instruction to teach them the normal school
curriculum.
Оқытудың техникалық құралдары: интерактивті тақта, проектор, бейнефильмдер.
Лекция оқудың тәртібі, оқыту әдістері мен түрлері: миға шабуыл, презентация,
баяндау, сұрақ – жауап, түсіндіру.
Әртүрлі күрделілік деңгейдегі тапсырмалар (сұрақтар) және оларды бағалаудағы
ұпайлардың үлестірілуі:
1. Күрделі деңгей:
1. Language Maintenance and Shift
2. Орта деңгей:
1. Language Death and Language Loss
3. Жеңіл деңгей:
1. Factors Contributing to Language Shift
БӨЖ және ОБӨЖ тапсырмалары, олардың түрлері мен орындалуына қойылатын
ұпайлардың үлестері:
1. Sociolinguistic Typology
2. Language Maintenance, Shift and Death
Ұсынылатын оқулықтар мен Web сайттар тізімі
1. Labov, William (2016). The Social Stratif cation of English in New York City 2e. New York:
Cambridge Univeresity Press.
2. Trudgill Peter. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Fourth Edition 2018.
University of Reading.
3. Raymond Hickey (2018). Language in Society and Language Use. Cambridge University.
4. Chambers, Jack (2019). Sociolinguistic theory. Linguistic variation and its social significance.
3rd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
5. Bayley, Robert and Ceil Lucas (2017). Sociolinguistic Variation. Theories, Methods, and
Applications. Cambridge University Press.
6. Blommaert, Jan (2018). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge University Press.
7. David Crystal (2015). Applied Sociolinguistics. ACADEMIC PRESS INC. (LONDON) LTD.
8. Trudgill, Peter (2016). A Glossary of Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: University Press.
9. Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 7th edition 2017.
Oxford: Blackwell.
10. Nancy H. Hornberger and Sandra Lee McKay (2018). Sociolinguistics and Language
Education. University of Reading, Reading, Great Britain.
11. Тұрлыбеков Б.Д. Әлеуметтік лингвистика. Оқу құралы. Түркістан: «Тұран», 2018.
12. Аман Абасилов. Әлеуметтік лингвистика. Оқу құралы. Алматы «Асыл кітап», 2016