Ethnolinguistic Vitality

Language and Intergroup Relations

Objective vitality enables a group to survive as a distinctive and thriving collective entity. Groups with higher vitality survive and prosper; groups with lower vitality eventually cease to exist. Three factors combine to determine objective vitality: status variables, which include economic, social, and historic status as perceived from within and from outside the group; demographic variables, which include territory, population numbers, rates of birth, mixed marriages, immigration, and emigration; and institutional support variables, which include formal and informal representation in the mass media, education, government services, industry, religion, and culture. Objective vitality provides the sociostructural context for ethnolinguistic phenomena, but individual people's subjective beliefs about relative group vitality are predictive of behavior. Subjective vitality has been measured across cultures, usually as a single dimension, and has been found to vary between contexts and in the way it is structured—for example, depending upon what groups are being compared and the relative weighting of different facets of vitality.

Ethnolinguistic identity theory builds on and elaborates social identity theory and combines with communication accommodation theory to make predictions about language use in intergroup settings. Following social identity theory, it is [Page 253]assumed that people are motivated to maintain a positive social identity and that groups with higher vitality confer more positive identity than groups with lower vitality. Following communication accommodation theory, it is assumed that people use language to psychologically accommodate to or differentiate themselves from others, and that doing so reflects beliefs about relative vitality.

There are three social strategies that people can use to create a positive social identity. The first is social mobility, in which people in subordinate groups can disown their group and converge upon the language of a group that possesses higher vitality. This happens when people have little commitment to their group and see the possibility of passing into a dominant group as feasible. Social mobility is endorsed by dominant groups that aim to assimilate minorities.

The second strategy is social creativity, in which people in subordinate groups may organize collectively, but they avoid direct competition with a dominant group. Examples include diglossic languages such as those spoken in Switzerland, where there are High German and (low) Swiss German forms. Speakers of the low form are viewed more favorably on solidarity (e.g., friendliness and kindness) than status (e.g., wealth and intelligence), whereas the reverse is true for those who speak the high form. This happens when people have a strong commitment to their group, when group boundaries are considered impermeable, and when status relations between groups are highly stable. Members of dominant groups will endorse social creativity when their status advantage is unstable.

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