32.2587, FYI: Official Launch of the Migration Linguistics Unit

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-2587. Sat Aug 07 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.2587, FYI: Official Launch of the Migration Linguistics Unit

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Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2021 20:40:32
From: Ariane Borlongan [ariane at tufs.ac.jp]
Subject: Official Launch of the Migration Linguistics Unit

 
Official Launch of the Migration Linguistics Unit

September 28, 2021
8:00PM Tokyo
7:00AM Boston
12:00PM London
1:00PM Frankfurt
6:00PM Bangkok
7:00PM Manila
9:00PM Sydney
Zoom and Facebook Live

Registration:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdJUWvxGzPm-b78leNiMGnYkxx8LLpw_5be6x
LiQ7yD8XRrtw/viewform

TUFS Migration Linguistics Unit website:
https://www.migrationlinguistics.info

Part 1: Overview of the Migration Linguistics Unit
Ariane Macalinga Borlongan

Part 2: Inaugural Lecture: ‘Migration, Sociolinguistic Typology, and Language
Change’
Paul Kerswill

With increasing migration across the world, there is a corresponding increase
in language contact. While existing accounts of contact remain valid, such as
those of Thomason & Kaufman 1988, van Coutsem (2000) and Thomason (2000), it
is relevant now to broaden our understanding of the relationship between
contact, language change and social structures in the context of high
migration. In his sociolinguistic typology model, Trudgill (2010) provides a
framework with the capacity to predict the kinds of language structures that
are likely to be found in particular types societies. Trudgill (2010: 300)
summarises the relevant factors as follows: (1) small vs. large community
size, (2) dense vs. loose social networks, (3) social stability vs.
instability, (4) high vs. low degree of shared information, and (5) degree of
contact vs. isolation. With these in mind, Trudgill (2020) discusses factors
which lead to rapid vs. slow language change: the fundamental pattern is that
disruption of networks, caused by contact through migration or other rapid
social change, accelerates language change. I argue that, with current levels
of migration, it is now both feasible and important to test Trudgill’s
predictions by applying them directly to contact-induced change in present-day
societies. Trudgill’s model is based on data across time depths of centuries
or millennia, coupled with overall characterisations of the social structures
of the societies involved. I will consider published studies of today’s speech
communities from the point of view of the parameters listed above. As an
adjunct to the investigation, I will argue that a related model proposed by
Andersen (1988) adds further insights. This is the idea that, in addition to
being high-contact versus low-contact (Trudgill’s fifth parameter), societies
vary on a scale from being very inward-looking to being strongly oriented to
social and linguistic influences from outside. As a further factor, I will add
one not specifically raised by Trudgill or Andersen: this is the degree to
which the society has a strong monolingual ethos (e.g. China, Japan, France)
or a multilingual one (India, many countries in Southeast Asia, Africa). In
the former case, language change is inhibited, even in the face of large-scale
immigration, while in the latter case there is an increase in societal and
individual multilingualism.

Paul Kerswill is Emeritus Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of
York, UK. He holds a PhD from Cambridge, and worked at Durham, Cambridge,
Reading and Lancaster universities before being appointed to a chair at York,
from where he retired in July 2021. He is Fellow of the British Academy. Most
of his research has been on the linguistic and sociolinguistic effects of
migration, with a particular focus on dialect contact. His doctoral study was
on rural migrants in Bergen, Norway. His later research has centred on the
Southeast of England, beginning with an investigation of the new contact
accent of the New Town of Milton Keynes. He is best known for his work with
Jenny Cheshire and others on Multicultural London English, a distinctive new
dialect that has emerged following large-scale immigration, multilingualism
and unguided second-language acquisition. He also has an interest on language
and development issues in Ghana, on which he has published. 
 



Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics





 



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