Within a single nation state there may exist a myriad of

language:

1. Dialectal Differences due to communication barriers: regional

and social

2. In many other cases, especially in the present era,

communication isolation is less pronounced: Contact between
different groups is obviously a social phenomenon, a
phenomenon that nearly always involves a linguistic
dimension.
 Once different linguistic groups are in direct touch, they have
a natural, spontaneous tendency to seek ways of bypassing the
language barrier facing them, and it is also typical for their
varieties to influence one another according to circumstances,
notably large-scale, long-term contact.

Just as the same way as dialects within a single nation

influence each other, different languages may also have
slight/considerable impact on one another once their users are
in contact domain of contact linguistics
• Although there has been interest in language contact even
during the 19th c, the real start of the field was in the 1950s,
especially after the publication of Weinreich’s (1953) work
‘Languages in Contact’ contact linguistics could stand as a
fully fledged subdiscipline of linguistics with new directions and
specific goals.
• LC is the social fabric of interaction between different
linguistic (autochthonous) groups worldwide.

• Historically, LC has taken place in large part under conditions

of social inequality resulting from:

Wars conquests slavery migration trade urbanization

(contact motivations)
The frequently they are in direct contact, the stronger the
influence on their language varieties is.
 Indirect contact (distant contact)

mass media technology education systems

political ideologies of imperialistic powers

A clear case may relate to languages of wider communication

(LWC), not least English. Through a language diffusion policy,
English has become a de facto global language gaining increase
momentum
• Depending on some linguistic and extra linguistic criteria:

1. language contact has in some times and places been

short-lived

2. other situations have produced long-term stability

and acceptance
• LC may lead/involve phenomena, such as
1. language shift,
2. lingua francas,
3. pidginization,
4. creolization,
5. bilingualism,
6. borrowing,
7. code switching.