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This book introduces a new and still emerging theoretical framework for understanding language shift and uses this approach to explore a range of minority language communities in the United States. It includes specific case studies of individual communities as well as commentary chapters that provide a broader perspective.
List of contents
- 1: Joshua R. Brown and Joseph Salmons: A verticalization theory of language shift
- 2: Mirva Johnson: Politics and cooperatives: Verticalization in rural Finnish-American communities of the Upper Midwest
- 3: Joshua Bousquette: The Great Change in midwestern agriculture: Verticalization in Wisconsin German and Wisconsin West Frisian heritage communities
- 4: David Natvig: The Great Change and the shift from Norwegian to English in Ulen, Minnesota
- 5: Joshua R. Brown: Language shift and religious change in Central Pennsylvania
- 6: Benjamin E. Frey: Internal verticalization and community maintenance: The story of North Carolina Cherokee
- 7: Salikoko S. Mufwene: The verticalization model of language shift from a population-structure perspective: A commentary
- 8: Anita Auer: The verticalization model of language shift from a historical sociolinguistic perspective: A commentary
- 9: Joshua Bousquette, Joshua R. Brown, Benjamin E. Frey, Mirva Johnson, David Natvig, and Joseph Salmons: Reflecting on the commentaries
About the author
Joshua R. Brown is Professor of German and Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. He is primarily interested in heritage languages, language maintenance and shift, multilingualism, and historical sociolinguistics. His work has appeared in the Journal of Language Contact, Critical Multilingualism Studies, and American Speech, among others. He is the co-editor of Pennsylvania Germans: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (with Simon J. Bronner; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017) and editor of a special issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics focusing on heritage languages.
Summary
This book introduces a new and still emerging theoretical framework for understanding language shift and uses this approach to explore a range of minority language communities in the United States. It includes specific case studies of individual communities as well as commentary chapters that provide a broader perspective.
