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An international handbook of the science of language and society, 2nd edn., Vol 3. Berlin: De Gruyter.
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Britain 2002, 622-627; 2003). The geographical models applied were asocial in character (Britain 2003), while the linguistic focus was on individual features viewed within a mechanistic theory of change (the regularity hypothesis (Hock 1991, 35)). A parallel research tradition, focusing on pidgins and creoles (Schuchardt 1980) but also on language islands (Bohnenberger 1913; Schirmunski 1928), investigated the linguistic consequences of relocation diffusion (Britain 2003), by which cultural elements (including language) are transmitted to non-contiguous locations by human migration. From the outset, this tradition has taken social conditions into account, particularly in pidgin/creole linguistics: Holm (2000, 30) cites Schuchardts 1882 study of So Tom Creole Portuguese, which opens with a discussion of the social history of the language. It was only recently that the relationship between the two types of diffusion was acknowledged: both involve the varied psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic processes resulting from language and dialect contact (Trudgill 1994). At linguistic borders and within linguistic areas (Sprachbnde; Chambers/Trudgill 1998, 168-170), expansion diffusion results in language contact, as do almost all cases of relocation diffusion. In these circumstances, we may find pidginisation, creolisation, second-language acquisition, multilingualism, borrowing and language shift. Dialect contact (Trudgill 1986) is characteristic of expansion diffusion within a dialect area (L. Milroy 2002). It is also characterises relocation diffusion when the migrants move to a place where the majority language varieties are mutually intelligible with their own, or when speakers of different, but related varieties converge on linguistically virgin territory, as in a new town or in many colonial settlements. Here, the processes involved are second-dialect acquisition (Chambers 1992; Britain 2003; Kerswill 1996), accommodation (Trudgill 1986, 1-38), mixing, simplification, levelling, hyperdialectalisms and reallocation (Trudgill 1986; Britain/Trudgill 1999). The extent and manifestation of each of these processes depends on the nature of the contact and the types of communities involved (Trudgill 2002); however, their manifestations will be more extreme in cases of relocation diffusion than expansion diffusion (Britain 2003). In this chapter, I shall treat relocation as equivalent to migration. The focus will be on the parameters of migration as identified by human geographers. The linguistic and sociolinguistic consequences of each will be illustrated with examples.
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space time motivation socio-cultural factors (Lewis 1982, 9-19; Boyle et al. 1998, 34-38)
We will present each of these separately, along with discussions of their sociolinguistic repercussions.
2.1 Space
Boundaries The concept of space in migration studies relates, primarily, to whether administrative boundaries are crossed. Migration is defined as movement across the boundary of an areal unit (Boyle et al. 1998, 34), whereas a move within an areal unit is, simply, a local move (Lewis 1982, 10). Obviously, the larger the areal unit considered, the fewer moves will be classified as migrations, though this may not reflect the impact of the moves on the communities concerned. A move across a boundary within a country is termed internal migration, the people involved being in-migrants to the -3-
areal unit, those moving out of it (to whatever destination) being out-migrants (Boyle et al. 1998, 34-5). Sociolinguistically, the distinction between moves within and across administrative boundaries within a state is of little consequence except insofar as the boundaries reflect, or in some cases shape, differing allegiances. For example, Llamas (2000) reports that younger people in Middlesbrough in northeast England have ceased to identify themselves as being from Yorkshire, the county to which it had belonged until boundary changes in 1968. This is reflected in the fact that the local accent has taken on features from the city of Newcastle to the north, even though selfexpressed identities are aligned not with Newcastle but with the town itself. Whether these changes were caused by the boundary changes or by, say, economic changes is a moot point. Where the boundary separates states, significant differences of culture, economic conditions, education and language may be involved, and the impact of the migration will be greater. Omoniyi (1999) notes that in Idiroko and Igolo, villages on either side of the border between Nigeria and Benin, language attitudes differ within the same ethnolinguistic group, the Yoruba. On the Benin side, the population is more positively disposed towards Yoruba than are the Nigerians, while often sending their children across the border to be educated through the medium of English instead of French. At the same time, the twin villages have attracted numerous incomers, such as traders, smugglers and money-launderers, in addition to the presence of border officials.
Distance Space is also reflected in distance. Short-distance migration differs from long-distance migration in the degree to which individuals can maintain links with the point of origin, as well as in the amount of personal commitment (resources, motivation) needed to move and maintain links. As with expansion diffusion (Hgerstrand 1952; Trudgill 1983; Britain 2003), gravity models have been applied to migration (Hgerstrand 1957, cited in Lewis 1982, 51-2). The model is the same, and predicts that migration flows will be a function of the size of populations at the points of origin and destination, and the distance between them (Lewis 1982, 53). However, geographers point out that perceived distance is not the same as Euclidean distance, -4-
with a logarithmic transformation to some extent matching economic and psychological distance. This is in line with the claim that nearby places are seen as strongly differentiated and those further away as more uniform (Lewis 1982, 50). While short-distance moves enable existing social ties to be maintained, intermediatedistance moves are often to a socially similar area and allow new ties to be established. On the other hand, long-distance moves may involve a very different environment (Lewis 1982, 51), and establishing new ties will prove problematic (though cultural differences are small in the case of Europe and distant former European settler colonies such as those of Australasia, Canada, the USA and parts of Latin America). The factor of distance is relevant sociolinguistically, but is not an explanatory variable because there are a number of intervening variables. Primarily, distance relates to the extent to which social ties can be maintained, as already noted. Weekly face-to-face contacts will serve to maintain dialect and language better than annual home visits. However, beyond a certain distance (Lewis rather arbitrarily mentions 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres)) and a certain level of difficulty of travel to and from the home region, absolute distance is less relevant: direct contact will be relatively rare, and the cultural difference between the migrant and host groups will be relatively great. There are, however, a number of intervening variables, including wealth (reflecting ability to pay for travel). Two factors, in particular, are likely to have powerful sociolinguistic consequences, overriding distance per se: motivation and socio-cultural factors (2.3.). Distance seen in isolation from other variables is unlikely to show anything other than a weak association with language behaviour. Long-distance, long-term labour migration from less to more developed countries has been characteristic of the period since c. 1950, and is discussed under long-term migration, below (2.2.). Sociolinguistic issues are taken up there as well.
Direction Finally, space also involves direction. Historically, mass migration in Europe and North America has been from rural to urban areas, starting in Britain in the late 18th century with the Industrial Revolution (Boyle et al. 1998, 5-9). The process was complex, with a good deal of short-stay migration (circulation; see below), as well as -5-
return migration over a lifetime (Boyle et al. 1998, 9; see below). This was followed in the early 20th century by suburbanisation, with commuting made possible by improved transport links and the motor-car. From the 1960s, we find counterurbanisation, with quality-of-life decisions and industrial relocation playing their part. However, recent years have seen an urban revival, with strong population growth in US metropolitan areas (Boyle et al. 1998, 14). Sociolinguistically, the critical directional parameter is that of in- vs. outmigration, since these alter the demographic balance of the location under scrutiny in terms of age, socio-economic class, ethnicity, other socio-cultural factors and language. At the same time, social network densities will change, both for the migrants and the destination societies, with the result that language change and language shift may be accelerated. For Europe and North America, the historical picture is one of considerable, mainly citywards movements, followed by more geographical mobility through internal migration and circulation in the shape of commuting. Within present-day western cities, differences have been noted in the pattern of migration among innercity residents (mainly local moves, with no predominant direction) and suburban residents (moves over a greater distance, outwards from the centre within their own geographical sector) (Balderson 1981, quoted in Lewis 1982, 52). In inner cities, this pattern allows for the maintenance of close-knit networks as well as non-standard, localised language varieties (L. Milroy 1980), while more mobile outer-city speakers are more levelled in the sense of using fewer strongly local features (J. Milroy 1982; 1992, 100-109; see Kerswill & Williams 2000a on dialect levelling among mobile populations). In Great Britain, the establishment of new towns from the 1950s onwards led to the possibility of koineised (mixed, levelled and simplified Trudgill 1986, 127) new dialects (Kerswill/Williams 2000b). In Europe, initial urbanisation, the loosening of individuals network ties following greater geographical mobility and the formation of new towns are thought to have resulted in regional dialect levelling or dialect supralocalisation, which can be understood as the rise of distinctiveness at the wider, regional level at the expense of local distinctiveness, as well as the emergence of regional versions of the standard (cf. chapters in Foulkes/Docherty, eds., 1999; Milroy/Milroy/Hartley 1994; L. Milroy 2002; Trudgill 1999; Sobrero 1996; Hinskens 1996; Kerswill 2001; 2002; Andersson/Thelander 1994; Thelander 1982; Auer/Hinskens 1996, 4). -6-
In the developing world, ruralurban mass migration is a phenomenon of the latter part of the 20th century, with Sub-Saharan Africa the latest region to be affected (Boyle et al. 1998, 20-23). In West Africa, the dominant sociolinguistic effect appears to be an increase in individual multilingualism and the spread of lingua francas. Accra, the capital of Ghana, has seen massive in-migration. This has led to the indigenous ethnolinguistic group, the Ga, becoming a minority in the city (300,000 out of a population of 2 million (Grimes 2000)), with Akan/Twi now the main lingua franca with considerable numbers of L2 users. However, among northern migrants in Accra, Hausa is increasing its use as a lingua franca, reflecting its existing lingua franca status in the North (Kropp Dakubu 2000). Kropp Dakubu (2001) argues that the influx to Accra of people from the North has led to a conflict of sociolinguistic practices: the Ga share with other southerners (including the Akan) the custom by which visitors and hosts exchange news using spokesmen. This is not practised by northerners, who thereby remain outsiders. In Maiduguri, in northeast Nigeria, mass in-migration has led to Hausa being used as a lingua franca, particularly by L2 users, replacing the indigenous Kanuri. A new form of Hausa, separate from L1 varieties spoken elsewhere, is emerging (Bro forthcoming). Extreme political circumstances lead to directional mass migration. The Spanish occupation of Antwerp in 1585 led to the flight of over half the citys population to the western provinces of todays Netherlands, and has had a lasting effect on the dialects there (Auer/Hinskens 1996, 18). The resettlement in Germany of German speakers from the eastern provinces of the former Reich after World War II led to loss of dialect (Auer/Hinskens 1996, 20), while the post-war migration of people from eastern to western Poland led to dialect levelling (Mazur 1996). The relatively short-distance in-migration of rural people to local towns/cities has been the subject of sociolinguistic research. Bortoni-Riccardo (1985) considers the qualitatively different networks of Caipira (rural) speakers in Brasilia, Brazil; Kerswill (1994) considers dialect contact, long-term accommodation, network and integration among rural migrants in Bergen, Norway; Omdal (1994) examines attitudes and long-term accommodation among rural migrants in Kristiansand, Norway. A variation on this sociolinguistic approach is van Langenveldes (1993) quantitative migration-based study of the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. Here, there is in-migration of Frisian speakers to the towns, leading to a temporary increase in the number of Frisian speakers there. As these people and their -7-
descendants are urbanised, many will switch to Dutch. At the same time, there is counter-urbanisation led by Dutch-speaking town dwellers; this has the effect of decreasing the proportion of Frisian speakers in the countryside. The result is the potential for language shift to Dutch both in the country and in the towns.
2.2 Time
Migration implies a degree of permanence in the move; migrant groups tend to be committed to the project of living in other peoples countries, despite in many cases retaining diasporic yearnings for a return to the homeland (Rex 1997, 17). An absolute definition of migration in terms of temporal patterns is, however, not possible. Four temporal categories have been recognised: daily, periodic, seasonal and long term (Gould/Prothero 1975, cited in Lewis 1982, 17-18). Daily movements include commuting, while the latter three categories involve overnight stays.
Circulation A further category is usually made cutting across these three: this is the concept of circulation, which includes a great variety of movements usually short-term repetitive or cyclical in character, but all having in common the lack of any declared intention of permanent or long-standing change of residence (Zelinsky 1971, cited in Lewis 1982, 18). Examples of circulation include African nomads and western business people who spend regular periods every year working abroad (Boyle et al. 1998, 35). To these may be added the European Roma (see Rger 1995 and Matras 2000 for approaches integrating circulation and language contact). Students returning to their home towns during university vacations may find themselves with dual allegiances resulting in new dialect-mixing patterns that are not characteristic of the stay-at-homes (Blom/Gumperz 1972). As both insiders and outsiders, such individuals form a potential bridgehead for the introduction of innovations or for dialect levelling (language missionaries (Trudgill 1986)).
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Periodic and return migration The distinction between circulation and migration proper is, perhaps, arbitrary; the United Nations suggests a residence of at least one year in the host community as defining migration (Lewis 1982, 18). Turkish guest workers working in Germany in the winter but returning to Turkey in the summer are best regarded as temporary (periodic) migrants or seasonal workers (Boyle et al. 1998, 35). Guest workers and their families formed sufficiently large and permanent groups for code-switching norms to emerge (di Luzio 1984). Guest workers took employment in Germany expecting to leave permanently at the end of a work contract; for those who did indeed leave, the myth of return (the failure to complete the intended migration route (Boyle et al. 1998, 35)) was transformed into an actual return. Many migrants who have moved from a poorer to a richer country return to their place of birth at a later life-stage, either having accumulated enough money, or on reaching retirement; these are known as return migrants (Boyle et al. 1998, 35; Lewis 1982, 18). Others return, having failed to find work or an improved lifestyle, as was the case for many after the US stock market crash of 1929. The scale of return migration is shown by the fact that one quarter of those who migrated from Norway to the USA after 1880 eventually returned home (Engester 2002). Sociolinguistically, periodic and return migrations are significant for the country of origin and for the migrants themselves. Some 20% of the population of Puerto Rico are returnees from mainland USA, and 10% of children are Englishdominant. This has led to a conflict between the attitudes of Puerto Rican educators and commentators, who deplore the mixing of Spanish with English, and the return migrants offspring, who believe that it is possible to combine a Puerto Rico identity with English dominance (Zentella 1990). A rather different example is the Norwegian Arctic territory of Svalbard (Spitsbergen), where by law residents must remain registered as domiciled on the mainland and where no one is permitted to remain after retirement. The average duration of stay is 10 years, with the result that stable linguistic norms have not emerged. Families normally spend long summer holidays on the mainland. Children who grow up there speak using often idiosyncratic dialect mixtures, and express dual allegiance to Svalbard and to their official domicile in Norway (Mhlum 1992). -9-
Long-term migration The distinction between return and quasi-permanent migration rests on whether the individual actually enacts the myth of return. However, there may be no intention to return. This will be true for religious minorities, such as the German Mennonite communities in North America (MacMaster 1985; Kraybill 1989) and Russia, which have practised extensive cultural separation over two centuries or more and have formed language islands (Sprachinseln). But by far the largest category is that of the migrant with miscellaneous, though mainly economic motivations. The mass migration from Europe to the USA in the 19th and early 20th centuries is the clearest example of the intention to establish a new life, with no return envisaged. We can see the circulatory or seasonal migration patterns noted above merging, over time, with long-term migration. Starting in about 1950, western Europe saw large-scale long-distance unskilled labour migration from its former colonies (North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Pakistan, the West Indies), from eastern and southern Europe (Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece) and from Turkey (White 1993). These migrants were mainly men who came without families, and many, particularly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, were on fixed contracts. As Giddens (2001, 260) points out, this reflected not only macro-level economic circumstances, but also micro-level decisions taken by individuals, who used information gained from family and friends and the promise of a support network to inform their decision to migrate to particular countries and towns. Thus, Turks tended to migrate to Germany, in a series of chain migrations (Boyle et al. 1998, 36) by which individual pioneers were followed by others who knew them. A well documented case of chain migration is that of the Sylheti-speaking Bangladeshi community in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where their 17,000 children form over 50% of the school population (Gregory/Williams 2000, 38-9, 154). From about 1970, restrictions began to be placed on immigration, and a second stage of migration followed, that of family reunification (White 1993, 49-50). Initially, agencies such as employers and governments determined the source of the migrant workers and made provision for their housing. The subsequent reduced need for unskilled labour coincided with the obligation to support arriving families. With - 10 -
the encouragement of market-led housing, immigrant communities became more reliant on poor-quality and/or social housing. A third migration wave has followed, that of asylum seekers and refugees on the one hand and highly-trained workers on the other. Combined with the effect of socio-cultural differences between immigrant groups, different times of arrival and widely differing degrees of cultural and economic integration, all these factors have now led to considerable residential separation of ethnic groups in European cities approaching that already found in the USA (White 1993, 52-59). There has been considerable linguistic and sociolinguistic research on the German language islands of North America and elsewhere, much of it summarised in Rosenberg (forthcoming). Burridge/Enninger (eds., 1992) and Enninger/Raith (1988) are treatments of Pennsylvania German. Key issues are: dialect levelling (Schirmunski 1930); language contact with English on the syntactic level (Brjars/Burridge 2003); language contact and maintenance (Fuller 1996); cultural motivations for maintenance (Gal 1995). The mass migration from Europe to the USA spawned much early sociolinguistically-informed bilingualism research, notably that of Haugen (1953). The more recent long-distance labour migration to European (and North American) cities has obvious sociolinguistic consequences for the recipient communities, which have become increasingly multilingual. Thus, 33% of the primary school children of London (a city with a population of 8 million) do not have English as a first or home language (Baker/Eversley 2000). 10 languages have more than 40,000 speakers in London, and 40 more than 1,000. Sociolinguistic studies of migrant communities in western Europe vary widely in their approaches. Some are linguistic in their aims, with linguistic distance an explicit factor (e.g., Perdue 1993a,b). The Dutch Science Foundation Program on Language and Minorities explicitly combines socio-cultural and linguistic comparisons, focusing on two languages (Turkish and Moroccan Arabic) in the Netherlands (e.g., Extra/Verhoeven 1999). The project Languages and Cultures in the Utrecht Neighbourhoods Lombok and Transvaal is concerned both with linguistic aspects (e.g., Boumans/Caubet 2000) and with inter-ethnic contacts within a multilingual neighbourhood (e.g., Jongenburger/Aarssen 2001). Similar projects in Stockholm are Language and Language Use among Adolescents in Multilingual Urban Settings (Bijvoet 2003; Fraurud/Bijvoet 2003) and an earlier study reported in - 11 -
Kotsinas (1998). In London, more survey-based studies are those of the Linguistic Minorities Project (1985) and Baker/Eversley (eds., 2000). A network study of language shift and maintenance in Newcastle, England, is Li (1994). Work on the language of the 250,000-strong Finnish immigrant community in Sweden has focused on syntactic change resulting from dialect contact and the development of separate Sweden-Finnish norms (Lainio/Wande 1994; Lainio 1993).
Economic and cultural factors affecting orientation to migration However, the distinction between forced and voluntary migration may be hard to draw, because of the complex motivations in an individual case. According to Boyle et al. (1998, 36), Different sub-groups of the population have different migration propensities, and there is a relatively small group who continue to move frequently (movers) and a larger group who rarely move (stayers). This is related to the idea that some migration is innovative, that is, exciting and challenging, while other
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instances are conservative, meaning that migrants want to preserve as much as possible of what they had before (Boyle 1998, 37). There are few sociolinguistic studies of migration addressing these largely social psychological parameters. One that does is part of a larger project on eastern German migrants to western Germany in the 1990s (Auer/Barden/Grokopf 1998). In a case study of an individual migrant, it was found that his orientation towards living in western Germany changed drastically over time, as a result of losing his job following an industrial accident (Auer/Barden/Grokopf 2000). His network changed, along with his attitudes. In the first period, before the accident, he had acquired standard variants of a number of phonological variables. As he lost his work-based contacts, he reactivated his eastern German ones, and reverted to many of the Upper Saxon dialect features of his home province. It is possible to distinguish two broad types of relationship with the host society on the part of a minority group, one emphasising segregation, the other participation. Coleman (1997) points out that these two types may be the (automatic) result of socio-economic and demographic attributes related to education, income and occupation type. Alternatively (or in addition), they may be to with the minority groups orientation in terms of their response to the host society. Thus, a segregationist group, fearing extinction, maximises its reproductive potential and minimises contact with the outside world, through segregation and by limiting outmarriage (Coleman 1997, 1471), while one that is more participatory attempts to overcome the disadvantages of life as a new minority and to maximise social mobility and material standing by delaying marriage and ensuring a low birth-rate. The latter orientation does not entail assimilation, though in time it may lead to it. These orientations are related to cultural factors which may be independent of socioeconomic differences, for example, the maintenance of religion, different gender roles, and the practice of arranged marriages (Coleman 1997). Sociolinguistically, the practice of sending young men to visit the country of origin to participate in arranged marriages has the effect of continually refreshing the supply of L1 speakers. A strongly segregationist orientation, supported by external and internal institutions, legislation and a favourable economic climate, can lead to language maintenance over many centuries, as with some of the Pennsylvania German groups.
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Ethnolinguistic vitality and saliency All the factors discussed above are related to the notion of ethnolinguistic vitality (Allard/Landry 1986; Sachdev/Bourhis 1993; Landweer 2000), measured in terms of a range of indicators such as number of speakers, strength of ethnic identity, strength of economic base and range of domains of use. However, a languages ethnolinguistic saliency (Fishman 1999) is affected by the context in which a language group exists: this is to be seen both at the level of the immediate (i.e. conversational) setting and in terms of overall relations between groups. Saliency is increased by the presence of conflict, as well as by a high degree of perceived cultural difference, as a kind of figure-ground contrast (Fishman 1999, 154).
linguistic element (a phonological variable, a grammatical morpheme or a lexical item) found as a result of prior mixing. Koines are also simplified with regard to the input dialects, usually having smaller phoneme systems, more invariant word forms, and simpler morphophonemics.
Table 1: Indian Hindi dialects and Fiji Hindi definite future suffixes (from Siegel, 1997, 115) Bhojpuri 1sg 1pl 2sg (masc.) (fem.) 2pl (masc.) (fem.) 3sg 3pl bo, ab ab, b , iha be, ba b , bis b(h) bu ih, e, ihen Avadhi bu, ab ab be, ihai bo, bau , ihai, e iha , a Braj ihau, ugau iha , a gai (a)ihai, (a)igau (a)ihau, augau (a)ihau, agau (a)iha , a gai Fiji Hindi ega ega ega ega
The form ega clearly comes from Braj; in fact, it appears to be a compromise between the various forms available in Braj. The form presumably comes from Bhojpuri or Avadhi. The manner in which variants have been selected from the range of possibilities provided by the input dialects is an example of levelling. At the same time, the table shows extensive simplification, involving the loss of distinct suffixes
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for the first and second persons singular and plural, the third person singular and plural, and, predictably perhaps, a failure to adopt the gender distinction in the second person found in one of the contributing dialects (Bhojpuri).
children originate from various parts of Great Britain, and would therefore be expected to show a range of pronunciations for this vowel, from both the southeast and elsewhere. In order to see whether any focusing among the children has occurred, we can compare the fronting scores for the female caregiver (in almost all cases the mother) with those of their children. The variable has the following values: (ou) - 0: [o ], [o ] (ou) - 1: [ ], [ ] (ou) - 2: [ ] score: 0 score: 1 score: 2 score: 3 (Northern and Scottish realization) (older Buckinghamshire and London) (fronting) (fronting and unrounding)
(ou) - 3: [ ]
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An index score was calculated for each speaker, on a scale from 0 to 3, in interview style. It was hypothesised that the 4-year-old children would be measurably closer in their speech to their caregiver than are either the 8 or the 12 year olds. Figure 1 shows the correlation of the 4 year olds index scores with those of their caregivers. Taking the caregivers scores first, we note that they cover a very wide range. Four of the 16 have scores close to 0, indicating high-back rounded pronunciations characteristic of the north of England and Scotland. The remaining twelve are all from the south of England, and show different degrees of fronting. Like the adults, the children fall into two groups: those using high-back northern variants, and those favouring southern diphthongs. However, all the children are Milton Keynes-born, so we have here a case of some young children acquiring their parents dialect, while others have either not acquired it or have already accommodated to southern speech before the time of the interview. In fact, we have direct evidence of this type of accent mobility in this age group: one of the two boys at bottom left of the figure, the offspring of Scottish parents, was using a mainstream south-eastern accent by the time he was recorded for a second time eighteen months later.
2.5
0.5
children who have southeastern parents (represented by the large cluster in the centre and top-right of the figure), and therefore do not have a gross binary choice to make, there is a strong positive and significant correlation with the degree of fronting of their caregivers, with an r2 of .355 (Pearson; significant at p<.04). This suggests, of course, that these children match their parents quality for this vowel very closely. The two children with non-southern caregivers, at top left, have made the binary choice away from their parents pronunciation. Interestingly, they have then actually accentuated the difference by going for quite a fronted vowel. There is a great deal of diversity among the four year olds, reflecting the wider range of dialects spoken by the adults in the new town than would be the case in a longer-established town. In terms of finding out which age group is instrumental in the process of new-dialect formation, we need to look at older children. Figure 2 shows the same information for the remainder of the children, divided by age and sex. This time, once the three children from northern families have been removed, there is an almost complete absence of correlation (r2=.0532 for the combined age groups). By the age of eight, the children are no longer affected at all by their parents vowel articulations.
2.5
1.5 girls age 12 1 boys age 12 girls age 8 0.5 boys age 8
Fig. 2. Correlation of (ou) indices for 8 and 12 year olds and caregivers
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Not only is there greater homogeneity, but there is also focusing on a different norm even from that of the southeastern caregivers: the mean fronting is significantly greater than that of the parents, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2 Index scores for (ou): children and caregivers in Milton Keynes Child age group 4 year olds 8 year olds 12 year olds (ou) index: southeastern caregivers 1.47 1.44 1.31 (ou) index: children with southeastern caregivers 1.52 1.80 1.70 Standard deviation 0.4887 0.3545 0.3124 Significance (paired t-test) p=.628 r2
p=.004 p<.001
Range of index: 03 Thus, focusing on new norms in new-dialect formation is in the gift of older children, from (approximately) the age at which they begin to form friendship groups outside the home. This study therefore complements those investigating completed cases of new-dialect formation, in that it can shed light on the process itself.
4. Conclusion
Migration and language interact in a complex, yet transparent way. Chiefly, migration leads to language or dialect contact, and is, indeed, the prime cause of such contact. Despite the fact that migration varies greatly in time, distance and motivation, this chapter has been able to show that, given a particular constellation of migration type and language varieties in contact, it is possible to make generalisations, and even realistic predictions, about the sociolinguistic outcomes of the migration.
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