Research Background

Dialects and multilingualism



The discussion of regional dialects has always been a subject of interests in sociolinguistics. Decades ago linguists tended to draw up certain “dialect boundaries”. This school of analysis focuses on two major factors: time and distance, which give rise to regional languages (Wardhaugh 139). However, with an ever-growing number of multilingual speakers across the globe, the “fixed boundaries” have been more or less myths for language use and communication are fluid and dynamic. Whether considered from an individual or societal perspective, multilingualism is not a static phenomenon but a dynamic process (Wardhaugh 138). Romaine (1989) describes the classic patterns of how languages evolve in people: a once monolingual community becomes transitionally bilingual or multilingual as a stage on the way to the eventual extinction of its original language.

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There is a very high tendency that a language shift, defined by Weinreich (1953) as the change from the habitual use of one language to that of another majority language, occurs when both minority language and majority language are employed in the same social contexts. Societies which have maintained the use of their disparate languages for many generations might appear to be in a stable state of bilingualism or multilingualism. However, Chambers (2003) points out that stable bilingualism or multilingualism are relative terms because languages change constantly, as do the contexts and social circumstances in which languages are used. This is evidenced in the example of Oberwart, a community which eventually shifted to German monolingualism due to social changes in the community (Gal, 1979) albeit sustaining the region’s bilingualism in Hungarian and German for at least four centuries.

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In cases of a rapid language shift, which is more common in immigrant communities, the native language of a community might be displaced by the predominant societal language in the span of only three generations (Gonzo & Saltarelli, 1983). This has been evidenced among European immigrants in Australia (e.g., Clyne, 1991) and in the United States (Fishman, Nahirny et al., 1966).





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