Language Shift

+ The process of replacing a language with another as the means of communication and

socialisation for both an individual and a speech community.

+ Process in which a community of speakers stops using their traditional language and speaks

a new one in all communication settings. 
language transfer or replacement as a result of assimilation

Factors Contributing to Language Shift

The economic factor:
Obtaining work is the most obvious economic reason for learning another language.  In English-
dominated countries, for instance, people learn English in order to get good jobs.  This results in
bilingualism.  The high demand from industries for employees with fluent English has
successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English.  In fact, being
competent in English leads to well-paid jobs.

Social factor:
Language shift occurs when the community sees no reason to take active steps to maintain
their ethnic language.  When a community of speakers moving to a region or country whose
language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language.  Every time an
immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to children in place
of the old country language.  For example, when a migrant minority group moves to a
predominately monolingual society dominated by one majority group language in all the major
institutional domains – school, TV, radio, newspaper, government administration, courts, work –
language shift will be unavoidable unless the community takes active steps to prevent it.  

 Political factor:
A rapid shift occurs when people are anxious to ‘get on’ in a society where knowledge of the
second language is a prerequisite for success.

Demographic factor:
Resistance to language shift tends to last longer in rural than in urban areas because rural
groups tend to be isolated from the centres of political power for longer.  The rural people can
meet most of their social needs in the ethnic or minority language.  For example, Ukrainians in
Canada who live out of town on farms have maintained their ethnic language better than those
in the towns because of their relative social isolation.

Attitudes and values:  Language shift tends to be slower among communities where the
minority language is highly valued.  When the minority group support the use of the minority
language in a variety of domains, it helps them to resist the pressure from the majority group to
switch to the majority group language.
Language Maintenance
+ The process by which languages continue to be spoken by a speech community despite facing
competition from dominant or global language(s)

+ Efforts to continue using one’s first language despite influences of the

dominant/mainstream languages or other external, internal, and societal factors.