Displacement, Language Maintenance and Identity

This monograph presents an ecological perspective to the study of language maintenance and shift in immigrant contexts. The ecology incorporates past, present and future and treats spatial and temporal dimensions as the main organizing frames in which everyday language use and identity development can be explored. The methods combine a quantitative domain-based sociolinguistic survey with discourse analytic approaches. The novel approach is valuable for fellow researchers working in interdisciplinary fields of language maintenance, language shift, multilingualism andlanguage planning in migration contexts. The ecological perspective adds to sociolinguistic theories of globalization and responds to current dynamics of translocality in modern immigrant contexts. The research presents language use and language planning efforts in the Sudanese community of Australia. Language, culture, race and ethnic identity are explored in unique sociolinguistic contexts using an emic research lens and giving voice to the participants.

Shirley O’Neill, University of Southern Queensland:
This fine research allows us to reconceptualise our knowledge and understanding of “immigrant groups”. It uses an ecological paradigm to explore and reveal the mobility, multilingualism and agency of Australian Sudanese refugees as members of communities of practice. Through a post-modern lens it provides much needed in-depth, insights into the importance of languages, literacy and diversity to survival. It contrasts languages use across time, space and generations, and gives voice to the Sudanese people. Besides providing new ways of thinking about sociolinguistics, this research provides important advice for immigrants’ acculturation into the Australian community and languages policy and planning.