Volume 2014, Issue 230 - Special Issue: Ethnolinguistic Identities and Loyalties

Ethnolinguistic vitality has emerged as an important empirical framework to examine the linguistic identity of ethnic groups, especially small migrant ones. The likely survival of an ethnic group as a distinct linguistic entity is based on factors like demographic patterns, its status in inter-group setting and institutional support the group receives. Besides language use patterns of a group also contributes towards its vitality. The present article reports the findings of a survey undertaken to examine the ethnolinguistic vitality of a small immigrant ethnic group in the valley of Kashmir. During the study, it was observed that in intergroup setting where a large and prestigious group dominates a small group in almost every public domain, language use patterns of the latter can be a significant factor in contributing towards its vitality.

In the social and political act of protesting, signs carried by protesters are mediational means to clarify demands and express feelings and, thus, add to physical action such as demonstration, sit-ins, chanting and barricades. Taking as a case in point the “Arab Spring” revolution, triggered by the successful popular uprisings in Tunisia, then Egypt, in early 2011, and, for comparative purposes, a few examples of similar mass protests elsewhere, I show, through a semiotico-textual analysis of these mobile signs, the significance of code choice and the symbolic meaning of these artifacts. Mobile signs are texts resulting from a judicious code choice in relation to multiple target audiences – local, regional and foreign. Code choice is also examined for symbolic meanings which reveal the power of signs to mediate action, their intersection with, their role and their embedding in, the act of protesting. Pregnant with discourse, signs are a powerful tool for giving cultural and political meaning to protest. The inclusion of mobile signs in the study of the linguistic landscape scholarship challenges the notion of territoriality as a fixed place.

Colloquial Singapore English, or Singlish, exists in an environment characterised by strong language planning aimed at demoting it in favour of Standard English, as well as in a linguistic ecology featuring a number of languages that have had an impact on its current form. An actual definition of Singlish, beyond scholarly linguistic analyses, is less than straightforward, and this article sets out to address this. Chinese Singaporeans were asked to define Singlish, and elements of Hokkien (one of the major substrate languages involved in the emergence of the contact variety) in conjunction with Singlish were subjected to attitudinal ratings. The results call for a redefinition of Singlish not in terms of a clear set of features that set it apart from other varieties, but rather as a combination of linguistic resources that combine to create a stylistic repertoire appropriate for the expression of, among other stances, local identity.

The majority of young Welsh speakers now come from English-speaking homes and reside in communities where English is the dominant language (Jones 2008: 550; Jones 2012: 6). Previous studies have shown, however, that these speakers use Welsh less than those from Welsh-speaking homes in Welsh-dominant communities (Jones 2008: 553). This article examines the correlation between speakers' backgrounds and their language attitudes, self-confidence in their language skills and use of Welsh. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 27 participants from two cohorts of Welsh-medium Sixth Form units in a Welsh-dominant area of North West Wales and an English-dominant area of North East Wales. While attitudes towards Welsh were generally positive, those from English-speaking homes feel less confident in their Welsh in both areas. The use of Welsh amongst those from English-speaking homes is also relatively low regardless of the dominant language of the community. Amongst those from Welsh-speaking homes, use is significantly lower amongst those who reside in the North East. It is suggested that these results are attributable to peer-group dynamics in the two areas: in the North West, language-specific peer groups were found whereas English was the language of all peer groups in the North East.

There has been considerable interest in the linguistic emergence of “pan-ethnicities” in urban Europe, while much less attention has been paid to the emergence of such identities in post-colonial contexts, where it could serve as an indicator of nation-building processes. The case study I propose is Namibia, a country bearing a legacy of segregation along ethnolinguistic lines. Relying on an experimentally set-up corpus of interethnic interactions, I investigate patterns of linguistic convergence and divergence/maintenance across ethnic combinations. On the basis of an analysis of lexical and morphosyntactic variation as well as of code-switching patterns involving up to three languages simultaneously (i.e. Afrikaans, English and one among the various Namibian ingroup languages), I first identify evidence of a general dichotomy between whites and nonwhites. I further identify evidence of a Nonwhite pan-ethnicity, which, however, reveals upon closer inspection signs of a socio-historical division between northern and southern ethnicities. Finally, I demonstrate the relevance of “multiethnolectal studies” to describing nation-building processes by placing the findings of this study in a broad post-colonial context.

In this article, we consider the status of Northern Cree, commonly considered a sub-dialect of Plains Cree. Although northern Alberta, where Northern Cree is spoken, is home to thousands of Cree speakers, the sub-dialect's characteristics and dynamics are understudied. Based on our Cree language training since 2000 and our fieldwork since 1996, we provide new data on Northern Cree and on Cree language use and issues in northern Alberta. We elucidate some general structural features of Plains Cree before looking specifically at some slightly differing features of the sub-dialect, Northern Cree. We also pay special attention to questions of language in use: who is speaking Northern Cree, when and why? We include data on multilingualism and convergence of Northern Cree with Plains Cree, French, English and other languages. We demonstrate that northern Alberta is, in many respects, a heartland for the Cree language, and not a periphery. We also suggest that Northern Cree likely ought to be considered a dialect in its own right and that this dialect is worthy of further linguistic and socio-linguistic research, as well as deserving of more coordinated status and corpus planning efforts.