SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the study of language maintenance and shift in transnational (migrant) contexts. It comprises a brief history of the field, covering its emergence, development, and expansion during the twentieth century. It includes a discussion of the main approaches investigating the processes of language maintenance and shift as well as the theories put forward to understand these processes and account for differences in the language practices of various ethnolinguistic groups. The final section moves beyond the twentieth century and focuses on how globalisation has significantly altered what constitutes ‘migration’. Rather than seeing it primarily as a process resulting in ‘permanent’ (re)settlement elsewhere, migration increasingly results in ongoing mobility. Such changes in turn affect language practices in diaspora contexts and impact our understanding of what constitutes language maintenance.