Hi Renee,
There has been work from a sociolinguistic and/or sociological perspective on
language loss and maintenance of bilingualism in communities over time which
might be relevant here. Much of this has been done on Spanish language use in
the US. People like Veltman, Pease-Alvarez, and Lopez, come to mind off hand.
Also, a number of linguists and anthropologists, like Leanne Hinton,
Michael Krauss, Jared Diamond, Marianne Mithun, Douglas Whalen, and William H.
Wilson, study language death or endangered languages from a community
perspective. Might find some of these sources useful.
Good Luck!
AW
---- Adam Winsler Applied Developmental Psychology Department of Psychology - 3F5 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030-4444Phone (703) 993-1881 FAX (703) 993-1359 Email awinsler@gmu.edu
http://classweb.gmu.edu/classweb/awinsler -----
renee hayes wrote:
> Martin brought up a question about bilingualism ...and since I have been > thinking of something lately, Martin, and your posting jiggled it I am going > to throw it out even if it is not entirely relevant to your question, but I > hope in some way it is... > > Ahem. So I have been thinking about looking at bilingualism from a > community standpoint (well, I know there has been a lot of tugging at the > definition of community lately, but I am doggedly clinging to this word for > lack of a better one at this point). I mean, bilingualism, multilingualism > are gereally considered in the literature I have read to be an aspect of an > individual, someone is "balanced" biligual, developing bilingualism...etc. > But I remember reading some reseach in a book couple of years ago looking at > for example a Hindi-speaking communiy (well, neighborhood) in England where > the unit of analysis for bilingualism was not the individual but the > community...sort of a distributed cognition kind of thing, I suppose. Where > there were people who read Hindi and people who read English and people who > spoke English and people who were good at official goverment English...all > to different extents, but they kind of worked together to an extent. So > basically everybody did not have to be bilingual in the usual way of > thinking (really proficient in all aspects of both languages) but the key to > survival, success, etc. was to know who was good at what thing. > > OK. Well for me since I started thinking about bilingualism in a > cognitively-oriented way first, and then encountered the notion of > sociocultural perspective, this is how my perspective has morphed. I am not > sure where to go from here, but if anybody knows any references or examples > of bilingualism viewed from any perspective other than > "somthing-in-the-head-of-the-individual," I´d love to hear it, because I am > still in the process of morphing. > > Renee Hayes, Ph.D candidate > University of Delaware (virtually) > > geographically... > > Doctor Canoa 4, 1º-A > 36206 Vigo > Spain > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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