Discussion Details
| Title: | Prestige & Language Maintenance |
| Submitter: | Nino Bourdjanadze |
| Description: | I think socio-economic factors such as access to formal education are to be
taken into account too. The reason why the individuals with lowest social status in a particular social community keep the indigenous language of their group might be related to the fact that they are socio-economically too far from the formal education in/of the dominant language. This lack of access also reduces the chances of the ideology of the dominant linguistic group being imposed on the dominated linguistic group. In fact, in some minority language communities in Europe language replacement has not occured at large (ie. diglossia existed but the situation was more or less stable) until education was made compulsory for all society, including individuals from the lowest social layer (who might account for the majority of that community). Also, it seems that those who most readily start using the dominant language usually belong to the middle, not the lowest, classes. |
| Date Posted: | 20-Jan-2006 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Sociolinguistics
Anthropological Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 17.193 |
| Posted: | 20-Jan-2006 |
