Abstract
The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for ‘minority’ and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and ‘zoned’ for use in specified regions. Using signage and narratives of place from selected rural and urban centres of the City of Lusaka and the City of Livingstone, we show how minority and non-official languages (some of which are unofficial and minor in region, but official in other regions) come to be part of the semiotic landscapes and social narratives of place outside legislated language ‘zones’. We problematize intergenerational language vitality and endangerment frameworks and notions of linguistic performative identities and reciprocal bilingualism to suggest that the presence of ‘out of place’ languages in dispersed communities of speakers in multiple localities is indicative of the vitality of the languages concerned. We conclude that language revitalisation frameworks need to consider alternative ways of language transmission focusing on mobile multisited and delocalised communities of speakers and their heteroglossic language practices. This means locating the languages or their fragmented forms in the spoken and written repertoire range of dispersed multilingual communities across multiple localities.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction: Regional and international perspectives on language activism
- Great-grandfather, please teach me my language!
- Developing a materialist anti-racist approach to language activism
- ‘My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’: Language, desire and performance among Cape Town’s Khoisan language activists
- Linguistic landscapes and the sociolinguistics of language vitality in multilingual contexts of Zambia
- Assessing forty years of language planning on the vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone communities of Quebec
- Activism: Loving your languages and fighting for them
- Book Review
- Ingrid Piller: Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction: Regional and international perspectives on language activism
- Great-grandfather, please teach me my language!
- Developing a materialist anti-racist approach to language activism
- ‘My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’: Language, desire and performance among Cape Town’s Khoisan language activists
- Linguistic landscapes and the sociolinguistics of language vitality in multilingual contexts of Zambia
- Assessing forty years of language planning on the vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone communities of Quebec
- Activism: Loving your languages and fighting for them
- Book Review
- Ingrid Piller: Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics