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Language Maintenance

Language maintenance refers to situations where a speech community continues using its traditional language despite pressures to shift to another language. If a language is not maintained, it can become endangered and eventually die out as younger generations shift dominance to another language. For minority languages to be maintained, they must be highly valued as a symbol of ethnic identity. Frequent interactions between families and contact with the homeland can also help maintain minority languages, as can intermarriage within the group and using the language in formal settings like schools and worship. Institutional support from domains like education and media can make the difference between successfully maintaining or failing to maintain a minority group's language.

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139 views

Language Maintenance

Language maintenance refers to situations where a speech community continues using its traditional language despite pressures to shift to another language. If a language is not maintained, it can become endangered and eventually die out as younger generations shift dominance to another language. For minority languages to be maintained, they must be highly valued as a symbol of ethnic identity. Frequent interactions between families and contact with the homeland can also help maintain minority languages, as can intermarriage within the group and using the language in formal settings like schools and worship. Institutional support from domains like education and media can make the difference between successfully maintaining or failing to maintain a minority group's language.

Uploaded by

ArifinAtmadja
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE

Language maintenance is the degree to which an individual or

groups continues to use their language, particulary in bilingual or


multilingual area or among imigrant group, whereas language shift is
the process by which a new language is acquired by new community
usually resulting with the loss of the communitys first language.
Language maintenance refersto the situation where speech
community continues to use its traditional language in the face of a
host of condition that might foster a shift to another language.
If language maintenance does not occur, there can be several
results. One is language death; speakers become bilingual, younger
speakers become dominant in another language, and the language
is said to die. The speakers or the community does not die, of
course, they just become a subset of speakers of another language.
The end result is language shift for the population, and if the
language isn't spoken elsewhere, it dies.

How can a minority language be maintained?


1)A language can be maintained and preserved, when it's highly valued as

an important symbol of ethnic identity for the minority group.


2)If families from a minority group live near each other and see each other
frequently, their interactions will help to maintain the language.
3)For emigrate individuals from a minority group, the degree and frequency
of contact with the homeland can contribute to language maintenance.
4)Intermarriage within the same minority group is helpful to maintain the
native language.
5)Ensuring that the minority group language is used at formal settings such
as schools or worship places will increases language maintenance.
6)An extended normal family in which parents, children and grandchildren
live together and use the same minority language can help to maintain it.
7)Institutional support from domains such as education, law,
administration, religion and the media can make a difference between the
success and failure of maintaining a minority group language.

Language revival is a new field of practical


linguistics involving linguistics, governments
and(arguably most importantly) the
community in which the relevant language is
to be nurtured.Language revivalists feel that
revival is important because of the inherent
value of language diversity as well as
themoral imperative to preserve, and
consequently give new life to,languages that
are in danger of becoming dormant.

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