Displacement, Language Maintenance and Identity

What is it about?

This monograph presents an ecological perspective to the study of language maintenance and shift in immigrant contexts. The ecology incorporates past, present and future and treats spatial and temporal dimensions as the main organizing frames in which everyday language use and identity development can be explored. The methods combine a quantitative domain-based sociolinguistic survey with discourse analytic approaches. The novel approach is valuable for fellow researchers working in interdisciplinary fields of language maintenance, language shift, multilingualism andlanguage planning in migration contexts. The ecological perspective adds to sociolinguistic theories of globalization and responds to current dynamics of translocality in modern immigrant contexts. The research presents language use and language planning efforts in the Sudanese community of Australia. Language, culture, race and ethnic identity are explored in unique sociolinguistic contexts using an emic research lens and giving voice to the participants.

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Why is it important?

This is the first comprehensive volume published about the linguistic aspects of the settlement experiences of South Sudanese refugees in Australia. It is also the first study to use narrative analysis on stories as told by the Lost Boys of Sudan. The volume brings attention to the interconnectedness of heritage language maintenance, social capital and well-being in Australian immigrant communities. The findings of this research reveal experiences of everyday racism and the challenges that South Sudanese refugees face in their attempts to transfer their heritage language to the next generation. The volume provides a model for grass-root language planning based on a pilot project which was set up to teach Dinka language in an online environment. The concept of Cyberspora is coined to theorise new forms of connectedness in cosmopolitan spaces of multilingualism.

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