Article published In: Australian Applied Language Studies
Edited by Tim F. McNamara
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 10:2] 1987
► pp. 33–58
Language and social identity
Some Australian studies
Published online: 1 January 1987
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.10.2.04mcn
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.10.2.04mcn
Abstract
The study of language attitudes and language maintenance and shift in intergroup settings has not always been related to an explicit model of the intergroup situation itself. Such a model is available in Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory. This paper explores the potential of the model for predicting and explaining language maintenance and shift among immigrant and indigenous groups in Australia. The theory forms the basis of a study of the maintenance of modern Hebrew among immigrants from Israel in Melbourne, and is used to reinterpret the findings of several other recent Australian studies.
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