TY - JOUR
AU1 - GILES, HOWARD
AU2 - JOHNSON, PATRICIA
AB -  Ethnolinguistic identity theory: a social psychological approach to language maintenance HOWARD GILES and PATRICIA JOHNSON The study of language maintenance and erosion has traditionally been approached from a sociological perspective, and this is understandable given that data are invariably collected at a macrolevel in terms of group tendencies. At the same time, the people who constitute the collectivities examined have of necessity to make up their own minds regarding whether to maintain their ethnic tongue or let it erode. In other words, given that personal decisions are being made and individual strategies enacted (albethey highly social), we feel that language-maintenance theory would be enriched by a social psychological input. As such, and in the context of language maintenance being an intergroup phenomenon to the extent that it is being fostered side by side or in conflict with another group's language, cognitive processes relating to social categorization, identity, comparison, attitude formation, attribution, and second-language acquisition (among many others) have an important part to play even at the macro-level. To this end, we argue that 'ethnolinguistic identity theory' can provide a valuable new direction for furthering our understanding of the variables and mechanisms involved in the maintenance of an ethnic 
TI - Ethnolinguistic identity theory: a social psychological approach to language maintenance
JF - International Journal of the Sociology of Language
DO - 10.1515/ijsl.1987.68.69
DA - 1987-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/de-gruyter/ethnolinguistic-identity-theory-a-social-psychological-approach-to-ypqLv7aPvt
SP - 69
EP - 100
VL - 1987
IS - 68
DP - DeepDyve
ER -