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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Falam Immigrants In America: Motivations For Language Use, Maintenance, And Shift, Hannah Reeves
Falam Immigrants In America: Motivations For Language Use, Maintenance, And Shift, Hannah Reeves
Theses and Dissertations
Using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, I explore immigrants' individual motivations for language use, language shift and language maintenance. I met with 25 immigrants to the US who are native speakers of Falam, a language from Myanmar, to learn their reasons for Falam and English usage as well as their desires for Falam usage in the US. I used the Perceived Benefit Model of Language Shift's taxonomy of motivations to classify each motivation expressed. Among Falam immigrants to America, I found that solidarity-related and communicative motivations are behind language maintenance while economic and communicative motivations are behind language shift. …
Forecasting The Vitality Of The Fur Language: A Study In Language Use Patterns And Attitudes In Darfur, Kerry Mae Corbett
Forecasting The Vitality Of The Fur Language: A Study In Language Use Patterns And Attitudes In Darfur, Kerry Mae Corbett
Theses and Dissertations
The Fur language of Darfur, Sudan has been undergoing a decades-long language shift to the more dominant and prestigious Arabic spoken throughout the country. However, a decade of conflict in Darfur has brought greater awareness of ethnic identity and disrupted the previously-documented language shift. Using questionnaires, this study explores the current language use patterns and attitudes of 286 individuals in two towns and four Internally Displaced People camps in Darfur. It uses interviews to further explore language attitudes. The research shows that demographic variables such as gender, age, and level of education affect language use and attitudes and confirms that …