While much has been written about Gibraltar from historical and political perspectives, sociolinguistic aspects have been largely overlooked. This book describes the influences which have shaped the colony s linguistic development since the British occupation in 1704, and the relationship between the three principal means of communication: English, Spanish and the code-switching variant Yanito. The study then focuses its attentions on the communicative forms and functions of Gibraltarian English. The closing of the border between Gibraltar and Spain (1969-1982), which effectively isolated the...

This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world s speech communities are multilingual, much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap, investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada, USA, South Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), it explores: connections between the fields of creolistics, language/dialect contact,...

This book represents the first in-depth, comparative investigation of linguistic purism in modern French. It investigates the relative prevalence of purist ideology in France and Quebec. Both experience influence from English and have similar language legislation, but they differ in their social, political and economic history. Three different levels of society are examined (official, group and individual), allowing a comparison of the voice from above and the voice from below . This is a key element in recent discussions of language planning but is rarely provided in studies of French. The...

The volume presents a selection of contributions related to integration, adaptation, language attitudes and language change among young Russian-speaking immigrants in Germany. At the turn of the century, Germany, which defined itself as a mono-ethnic and mono-racial society, has become a country integrating various immigrant groups. Among those, there are three different types of Russian immigrants: Russian Germans, Russian Jews and ethnic Russians, all three often perceived as -Russians- by the host country. The three groups have the same linguistic background, but a different ethnicity,...