Summary Week 4 – Language Maintenance, Language Shift, and Language Change
Language varies in three major ways which are interrelated over time; physical space;
and social, so there is possibility that language may changes as it transforms over the
centuries. Corresponding to the sociolinguistics, language changes is a phenomenon
involving humans as they are also growing old. In multilingual communities, language
change is closely related with the replacement of vernacular language. Otherwise, as the
subject of communication, especially in multilingual communities, there are several reasons
for choosing particular code or varieties of language. The various constraints on language
choices faced by different communities may be a potential social reasons of language
shift or language death, so there should be a language maintenance in order to keep the
existence of language variations.
In (multilingual) community, there are always a group of young speakers who is
tendentiously more innovative and spontaneous in communication. It means that they are
easily adopting language varieties from other communities and diffuse it through their local
community. This revolutionary process, thus, may causing linguistics change. In general,
there are two factors that trigger the language changes:
a. Internal forces, including phonology, morphology, and semantics
b. External forces, including social geography, celebrities, dialect, gender, and
migration
In addition, language changes may spread in several ways, commonly from group to group
– means that social factors such as age, status, gender, and region affect the changes of
language. May be also from on style to another (from formal speech to less formal), and it
seems to be possible that language may changes from word to word (this is called lexical
diffusion).
As languages are always exist in communities, interactions and contact between people
plays a very important role to create a channel for language changes. It will be slowly
happened if people in communities are having less interactions and contact with their outside
communities because they will receive less influence.
Regarding on how outside world can possess the language changes in communities, this
becomes a pressure for the wider society because they are more open with immigrants.
Immigrants who look and sound ‘different’ are often regarded as threatening by majority
group members. There is pressure to conform in all kinds of ways; language shift to English,
for instance, has often been expected of migrants in predominantly monolingual countries.
However, the causalities not only come from the immigrant factors, but also the other
aspects including political, economic and social changes that occur within a community.
If the language change is being left overtime, the language may be death and loss. For
instances, less than half of the 250-300 Aboriginal languages spoken in Australia when the
Europeans arrived have survived, and fewer than two dozen are being actively passed on to
younger generations. In the wider community the language may survive for ritual or
ceremonial occasions, but those who use it in these contexts will be few in number and their
fluency is often restricted to prayers and set speeches or incantations. Another example of
language shifting can also be seen in English-dominated countries, for instance, people learn
English in order to get good jobs – which means that the economic factors is contributing to
language shift. Demographic factors are also relevant in accounting for the speed of language
shift. Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in urban areas. This is
partly a reflection of the fact that rural groups tend to be isolated from the centers of political
power for longer, and they can meet most of their social needs in the ethnic or minority
language.
However, language shift tends to be slower among communities where the minority
language is highly valued. In shorts, we may say that as long as the language is used and
values as an important symbol or ethnicity, the slower the language will exist. This way
belongs to language maintenance. Institutional supports also important in language
maintenance, a group who manage to ensure their language is used in settings such as school
or their place of worship will increase the chances of language maintenance. Finally, it takes
times, high conscious, and hard effort to slow down the process of language loss, indeed, it
should be done from generation to generations.