Tradução de COOPER, R. L.; FISHMAN, J. A. The study of language attitudes. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, v. 3, p. 5–19, 1974. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1974.3.5. A tradução para o português e a publicação foram autorizadas pela editora Walter de Gruyter.
The Spanish and English word naming and word association responses of two groups of Puerto Rican respondents, one living on the Island the other on the mainland, were analyzed in terms of the proportions of translation equivalent pairs to the number of words produced in the weaker language for each of five societal domains. The respondents living on the Island gave significantly higher translation equivalent ratios than did those living on the mainland. The domains of family and neighborhood exhibited the smallest translation equivalent ratios and the domains of education and religion the largest. Semantic independence and relative bilingual proficiency were found to be largely independent dimensions (since each pro- dominated in different domains) with the former reflecting the coordinateness of the bilingual’s language system.
The work upon which the present report is based was designed to integrate those aspects of bilingual behaviour which had previously been studied separately. A variety of linguistic, psychological, and sociological measurements of bilingual behaviour were designed for use in a study of Puerto Ricans in Greater New York. Bilingual census-takers asked a representative from each household to respond to a series of questions about himself and about the other members of the household. A variety of techniques for the measurement and description of bilingualism, derived separately from the disciplines of linguistics, psychology, and sociology, were administered to the same respondents, forty-eight Spanish-English bilinguals who lived in a Puerto Rican neighbourhood near New York, in order to assess the relationships among these measures and their relative utility as predictors of four proficiency criterion variables.
Abstract ANYONE walking into the Old City through the Jaffa Gate is immediately struck by the multiliteracy proclaimed by the signs. Street signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, advertising placards in those and other languages, building plaques in any one or more of a dozen different languages, all make clear that the sign writers have assumed that the passers-by can read many different languages. When the market is open, this impression of multilingualism is quickly reinforced by the babel of spoken tongues.
Abstract ONE of the central issues in the study of multilingual communities is the recognition of the ‘variables which may contribute to an understanding of who speaks what language to whom and when’ (Fishman 1971: 583). Fishman believes that by establishing the factors involved in stable multilingual situations, it should be easier to understand less stable situations. One such variable that helps to elucidate what happens in stable multilingual communities is the higher-order construct of ‘domain’.
Abstract INTERGROUP conflict over scarce resources leads to the use of whatever ammunition lies at hand. Language is a potentially powerful missile, and language planning is the weapon through which that missile is fired. Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the language behaviour of others. The promotion of Hebrew as an all-purpose vernacular in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Palestine is a notable example. Other well-known instances include efforts to cleanse modern Turkish of Arabic and Persian loan words, the successive switches from Arabic to Latin to Cyrillic script for writing Turkic languages in Soviet Central Asia, the feminist campaign against sex-bias in language usage, the Arabicization movement in North Africa and the Sudan, and the American bilingual-education movement.
Abstract ALTHOUGH the ravages of the Roman–Judaean wars had substantially depleted the Jewish population of Palestine, and although many of those who remained were converted to Christianity during the Byzantine period, a remnant of Jews survived and continued to live in Palestine until modem times. Their numbers were augmented at various times over the centuries by Jews from Diaspora communities returning to Palestine either as a possible place of asylum from persecution or in order to pray, study, or to be buried in their ancestral home, a wish to which their daily prayers made reference. Until the nineteenth century, however, immigration was small and sporadic, and poor local conditions—economic, health, and security–under the various foreign rulers meant that remigration was probably substantial (Bachi 1977: 77).
Abstract The Old City of Jerusalem, small and densely populated, is a complex microcosm of Israeli society. It is a multilingual community characterized by unequal power relations between the speakers of the two official languages of Israel - Arabs and Jews. The authors begin with a sociolinguistic sketch of the Old City in the present day. They then provide a historical background to their field study, discussing Jewish multilingualism from the period of the Second Temple until modern times, the sociolinguistics of Jerusalem one hundred years ago, and the recent revival and spread of Hebrew. They go on to develop a model of the rules of language choice which arises from their analysis of language use in street signs, and which they then apply to language use in the market place. In the final chapters they examine language learning and language spread in their social context. The authors demonstrate that, because of the close association between language use and social structure, the study of language use in a multilingual society is at the same time both a powerful and a delicate method of studying the dynamics of group interactions.
Abstract THE aim of this chapter and the next is to explore the form and nature of a theory of language choice, looking in particular at the suitability of a preference model for this purpose. In developing a tentative model, this chapter will present a set of rules accounting for the choice of language on public signs in the Old City; the next chapter will consider the rules of language choice as demonstrated by the speech of passers-by and shopkeepers in the streets of the market.
Abstract IN order to understand the present socio-linguistic situation of Jerusalem in its fullest historical context, it makes sense to start our study two millenniums ago, at the beginning of the first century of the Common Era. At least four languages appear to have played significant roles: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. We will look at each in turn, and then consider the pattern of multilingualism involved.
Abstract THE fortunes of a language can change as the number of its users and uses expands or contracts. Usually, but not necessarily, the spread of one language occurs at the expense of another. In the Old City we can see at least three examples of language spread: English among all sectors of the population; Hebrew among new immigrants to Israel; and Hebrew among Arabic-speaking residents. The spread of English in Israel (Fishman, Cooper, and Conrad 1977), as well as the spread of Hebrew among the Jewish residents of Palestine and Israel (Cooper 1984), have been described elsewhere. This chapter will examine the spread of Hebrew among Arab residents of the Old City.
Abstract JERUSALEM within the walls, which we have chosen, albeit somewhat arbitrarily, to define as the area of our study, was in actual fact the major part of the city until the later years of the nineteenth century: the first houses were built outside the Old City only in the 1850s (see Ben-Arieh 1979: 93 ff.; Ben-Arieh’s books are a major source of information on nineteenth-century Jerusalem, and my debt will be apparent). The walled city of today is closely connected in all ways to the city outside the walls: whether for work, or education, or as social or political limits, the gates of the city, closed nowadays only for traffic or other emergencies, serve to join the communities inside to those outside, rather than to divide them. But until the late nineteenth century this was not the case: the gates were shut every night (Ben–Arieh 1984: 21–3), and the walls defined the extent of the city
Abstract THIS chapter will look in particular at the status of the three major Jewish languages spoken in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century. As background, we will first sketch the make-up of the Jewish population of the city in I 881, choosing that year to take advantage of the detailed description provided by Luncz (1882) in his first year-book, originally prepared to answer a set of questions posed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 1876. Leaving aside the Karaites, a small Jewish sect which rejected Talmudic Judaism, Luncz divided the Jewish population into Sephardim and Ashkenazim: the former were subdivided into Sephardim proper, who spoke Judaco-Spanish, and Moghrabim, who spoke Arabic; the latter differed from the Sephardim, he said, by ritual and by the fact that they spoke Judaeo-German.
THE Old City is manifestly multilingual. As Chapter I has shown, close to half of the population in our sample, of whatever age, Vas reported to know at least one other language besides a mother tongue, a fifth of tl1c total was said to know two other languages, and a quarter was claimed to know three or more languages. The task of this chapter is to help to account for that knowledge by showing how these languages were learned.
The sociolinguistics of the Old City in the 1980s Jewish multilingualism the sociolinguistics of Old Jerusalem - non-Jewish languages in the late 19th century the sociolinguistics of Old Jerusalem - Jewish languages in the late 19th century the revitalization and spread of Hebrew the language of signs language choice in the market-place reflections of language planning language learning the spread of Hebrew among Arabic speakers.
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