7 - Dialect contact, ethnicity, and language change

Summary

[D]ialect adoption is not a simple matter of who you interact with under what circumstances – it's a matter of how you perceive and project yourself – much more capturable in cultural identity schemes than interactional reductionism.

(Walt Wolfram, cited in Hazen 2000:126)

DIALECT CONTACT AND ETHNIC BOUNDARIES

What happens when two or more ethnic groups, each with its own linguistic variety, are in contact in a geographic area over long periods of time? In some ways, it seems evident that this prolonged contact would lead the dialects in question to influence each other. On the other hand, we saw in the case of Muzel Bryant, presented in chapter 2, that ethnic boundaries can be extremely strong, even in contexts where assimilation seems most likely, and that these boundaries have corresponding linguistic effects. In order to study dialect contact issues, then, we cannot begin with a priori notions of how much linguistic convergence there will be in a particular multiethnic community. Each setting must be explored individually in the context of its own history, and particularly in terms of the specific categories and beliefs that are most relevant to how speakers in that community view their own ethnicity and that of other groups.