Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations

Abstract

The main goal of this chapter is to provide a framework for understanding the sociolinguistic and social psychological processes affecting language attitudes and language behaviours in multiethnic societies. The empirical research reviewed in the chapter focuses mainly on language behaviours related to code switching in encounters between members of contrasting ethnolinguistic groups. The first part of the chapter reviews intergroup processes affecting the development of language communities by focusing on the ethnolinguistic vitality of linguistic minorities and majorities in contact situations. Using the interactive acculturation model (IAM; Bourhis 2001a), the second part of the chapter provides an analysis of the language policies regulating the status of language communities in multilingual societies. The IAM proposes that the acculturation orientations of minority and majority group speakers can have an impact on the intergroup communication strategies they adopt during their intercultural encounters, resulting in harmonious, problematic or conflictual relational outcomes. The third part of the chapter provides an overview of communication accommodation theory (CAT; Giles & Coupland, 1991) which complements the IAM model in detailing the subtleties of the intergroup communication strategies used by minority and majority group speakers in their cross-cultural encounters.