LING 320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Language Planning, Language Shift, English Language In England

• School: McGill University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 320
• Professor: Charles Boberg

Document Summary

Language planning often not successful, often working against language shift (change dominant language from one to another) In the past, one language replaced another, but there was no net loss of linguistic diversity. Now the language replacing another is very often the same language (english or other major european colonial languages replacing indigenous languages) So there has been a lessening of linguistic diversity. Fear there is a major cultural loss. Language planners trying to prevent or reverse language loss. The linguistic diversity is great but should we prevent people from making their own choices about language to use. People are not making their own choice about language to use if they are being pressured by economic and political factors though. Languages people are most attached to today are the languages that result from language shift. There are cultures that have been linguistically anglicized but still maintain their own distinct culture.