Volume 2020, Issue 266 - Singles Issue: Multiplicity and Stratification of Languages and their Speakers; Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas

Changes in New Zealand’s immigration policy from the 1980s onwards contributed to growing diversity in the source country of migrants, and has transformed the ethnolinguistic composition of the country’s population in recent decades. The number of people who speak non-official languages is increasing, while the proportion of the English-speaking monolingual population is gradually decreasing. Many immigrants have been unable to integrate into the local labour market at levels commensurate with their qualifications and prior experience, however, and previous studies have noted the institutional and attitudinal hurdles to their integration. This study employs data from five censuses between 1996 and 2018 to explore the socio-economic characteristics of individuals who speak non-official languages (grouped according to the extent of their reported multilingualism), compared with monolingual English speakers and the total population. Competence in non-official languages is increasingly becoming an Asian-related phenomenon in terms of birthplace and ethnic and religious affiliations. The more multilingual cohorts displayed substantially higher levels of educational qualifications than other groups, and a strong increase in the proportion employed over this timespan. Modest income levels nevertheless indicate enduring underemployment. Indicators from the last two census years suggest improved workplace integration of ethnolinguistically diverse individuals.

Chubut Province, in Patagonia, Argentina, is home to a group of Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descendants of those who–starting in 1902–came to Argentina from the region of present-day South Africa. Although little Afrikaans is spoken among fourth- and fifth-generation community members, many in the third generation (60 years and older) still maintain the language. According to Joshua Fishman’s model of generational language shift, the Boers’ Afrikaans should have been largely diluted by the third generation; older community members today should have little functional knowledge of the language, and their children and grandchildren none. The goal of this paper is to explore the persistence of bilingualism in the Argentine Boer community and explain why the changes normally associated with the third generation of immigrants are only now being seen in the fourth and fifth generations. On the basis of bilingual interviews with living community members, we argue that the community’s attitude toward Afrikaans as a language of group identity, as well as the relative isolation of the community in rural Patagonia in the first half of the 20th century, were both decisive factors in delaying the process of linguistic assimilation. Only in the middle of the 20th century, when the community came into greater contact with Argentine society as a result of modernization and schooling in the region, did the process of linguistic integration begin in a measurable way.

Two concurrent discourses on the presence of non-national languages such as Spanish and its speakers circulate in Switzerland’s public sphere: one that conceives this presence positively and another that considers it negatively. Following a multimodal discursive-interactive approach, in this study I seek to determine which of these discourses is reproduced in the individual, private accounts of five Swiss nationals. My results show that these individuals echo both of the readily available dominant discourses, meaning that they construct contrasting attitudes related to said presence, regardless of whether these attitudes are deployed as part of their own set of beliefs or that of other Swiss nationals like them. These results build on prior research that shows that the private attitudes of individuals are often strongly affected by various elements of the situational context (e.g., dominant discourses, the immediate surroundings, etc.) and, as a consequence of this, variable by nature. More generally, my results demonstrate the need to reframe how certain aspects of prominent social topics such as the presence of migrants and their languages are treated by authorities and in public media outlets.

The article describes the legal configuration of France as a monolingual state and analyzes the specific case of the educational system. A certain accommodation of regional languages as a means of instruction has been accomplished, either in time-parity bilingual sections or in immersion schools. In this respect, the data provided by the literature on the case of Catalan in the historic territory of Roussillon are reviewed. The sources analyzed show two main conclusions: (1) the breakdown of intergenerational transmission, which means that there are practically no dialect speakers and that the standard language can only be learned at school; and (2) the enrollment rate either in time-parity bilingual sections or immersion schools is too low to be able to reverse language shift.

This study focuses on the factors contributing to language maintenance and shift in the bilingual community of San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala, where both Spanish and Kaqchikel are spoken. For many decades, San Marcos was relatively isolated from other nearby communities and many speakers were monolingual in Kaqchikel. However, recent changes in the community, particularly a rise in tourism and access to education, have contributed to an increased need for Spanish. The present study draws from qualitative data collected from sociolinguistic interviews and participant observation to determine both the usage of Kaqchikel and Spanish in the community and the attitudes that bilingual speakers have toward both languages. Results demonstrate that Kaqchikel continues to be a marker of identity and cultural pride, but the economic opportunities Spanish provides result in more people using Spanish at work and home.

Given the pivotal role mass media play in effecting political and social change, they can also contribute to the revitalization of an endangered or minoritized language if language policies are effectively implemented. Drawing on official documents regarding Amazigh broadcasting on Moroccan public television and interviews with Amazigh experts and media practitioners, this study scrutinizes the efforts exerted to revitalize Amazigh, the language of pre-Arab populations in North Africa. The results of the study indicate that while the status of Amazigh has changed drastically in the last two decades, its dissemination in public television is hampered by political, economic, and logistic forces. The study has implications for the areas of language revitalization, language shift reversal, language policy, and language planning.