Methodological and Analytical Issues in Language Maintenance and Language Shift Studies

The phenomenon of language maintenance and shift (LMLS) discusses how one particular language pervades the domain of another and eventually replaces that particular language. This book examines a number of methodological and analytical issues in LMLS studies. The writers discuss analytical constructs and review theoretical issues in LMLS citing studies from Borneo, Britain, Brunei, Malaysia, Mexico, and Singapore. A range of variables affecting LMLS in these sites are reviewed. The writers offer a substantial amount of systematically collected empirical data from a number of geographically diverse sites. The studies of LMLS analysed and reported here are invaluable not only to sociolinguists but also to scholars of related fields such as anthropology and communication.

Auteur

The Editor: Maya Khemlani David is an associate professor at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The author's research interest is in sociolinguistics with a special focus on the maintenance and shift of the languages of minority communities in Malaysia. She has researched on language choices of the Malaysian Sindhi community, the Portuguese community in Malacca and the Tamil community in Kuala Lumpur. She has recently competed research on the language choices of the Punjabi - Sikh community in the Klang Valley.

Contenu

Contents: Analytical Constructs and Methodological Issues in LMLS Studies - Manifestations of Language Shift - Variables Affecting Language Shift.