Toward a General Theory of Language Shift

Download or read book Toward a General Theory of Language Shift written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation develops the emerging model of verticalization to account for the social processes underlying language shift. The verticalization model originates from Roland Warren's (1978) study of the late 18th through the mid 20th century, during which American communities underwent a restructuring that accompanied the phenomena of urbanization and industrialization. Although Warren examines verticalization within a particular historical context, it seems to be a general feature of human society. Previous research (e.g. Lucht 2007) argues that institutional changes correlate with a shift from the community's heritage language toward English. To generalize Lucht and other scholars' framework on language shift, this dissertation focuses on two case studies - the situations of Wisconsin German and North Carolina Cherokee. In studying two such disparate language communities, I develop a more general model of shift. Although much research has been done on individual instances of language shift, no general model exists yet. The value of the model I employ is its versatility. The communities in my case studies have vastly different histories and social circumstances, yet both show the effects of verticalization on language shift. For Eastern Band Cherokees, paved roads, the lumber industry, tourism, and public schooling began substantially altering traditional social structures beginning around the 1910s. By the 1950s, Gulick (1958) reports that there are no Cherokees in the conservative community of Big Cove who cannot speak English at all. In eastern Wisconsin, public schooling, new regulations in the dairy farming industry, and an increasing availability of technology all began drive people to interact in different ways. As community structures and interactions changed, more social domains switched to English. For both communities this led to a tipping point at which parents began raising children to be monolingual in English. The continuation of this trend and the death of Cherokee in North Carolina would sever an important link between Cherokees and their traditions. It is hoped that studying the correlation between social change and language shift will lead to better solutions in reversing shift, and better understanding of how communities came to be as they are today.