This book examines transnational identities, integration and linguistic practices on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Within the context of major historical events and migratory flows, the author considers the significance of the multicultural small island space, ideologies regarding long-standing as well as emergent identification practices and language use, and conceptualizations of belonging, focusing in particular on the Madeiran Portuguese diaspora. The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary migratory flows opens up a compelling discussion concerning the maintenance and use of heritage languages in a multilingual environment, allowing a rare comparison of the symbolic role as ethnic identifiers of Jersey French, Standard French, English, and more contemporary migrant languages such as Portuguese. The author analyses the role of language in social integration and the potential for consequent shifts in group allegiances, as well as receptor community ideological and legislative responses, concluding with a hypothesised look at the future of migration to Jersey. This book advances research on migration, transnational lives and language use in an era of globalization, and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics, multilingualism, migration studies, and intercultural communication.

This book examines transnational identities, integration and linguistic practices on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Within the context of major historical events and migratory flows, the author considers the significance of the multicultural small island space, ideologies regarding long-standing as well as emergent identification practices and language use, and conceptualizations of belonging, focusing in particular on the Madeiran Portuguese diaspora. The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary migratory flows opens up a compelling discussion concerning the maintenance and use of heritage languages in a multilingual environment, allowing a rare comparison of the symbolic role as ethnic identifiers of Jersey French, Standard French, English, and more contemporary migrant languages such as Portuguese. The author analyses the role of language in social integration and the potential for consequent shifts in group allegiances, as well as receptor community ideological and legislative responses, concluding with a hypothesised look at the future of migration to Jersey. This book advances research on migration, transnational lives and language use in an era of globalization, and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics, multilingualism, migration studies, and intercultural communication.

This volume explores and compares linguistic practices among young people in linguistically and culturally diverse urban spaces.

Bilinguals often report that they feel like a different person in their two languages. In the words of one bilingual in Koven’s book, “When I speak Portuguese, automatically, I'm in a different world...it's a different color.” Although testimonials like this abound in everyday conversation among bilinguals, there has been scant systematic investigation of this intriguing phenomenon. Focusing on French-Portuguese bilinguals, the adult children of Portuguese migrants in France, this book provides an empirically grounded, theoretical account of how the same speakers enact, experience, and are perceived by others to have different identities in their two languages. This book explores bilinguals’ experiences and expressions of identity in multicultural, multilingual contexts. It is distinctive in its integration of multiple levels of analysis to address the relationships between language and identity. Koven links detailed attention to discourse form, to participants’ multiple interpretations how such forms become signs of identity, and to the broader macrosociolinguistic contexts that structure participants’ access to those signs. The study of how bilinguals perform and experience different identities in their two languages sheds light on the more general role of linguistic and cultural forms in local experiences and expressions of identity.

Situated at the crossroads of dialectology, sociolinguistics and contact linguistics, this volume provides a first comprehensive description of the morphosyntactic inventory of the variety of English spoken on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. Based on a specially compiled corpus of spoken material containing both present-day sociolinguistic and archive data, it thereby reveals an intricate network of variation and change in this language-shift variety. The study adopts a cross-varietal approach for its analyses, which enables a first more systematic comparison between the Englishes spoken on Jersey, on its sister island Guernsey and beyond. In addition, it discusses the implications of identity aspects for language use in Jersey. The book will therefore be of major interest to any researcher or student working in the areas of language variation and change, language contact or dialectology and to those interested in sociolinguistic methodology and the relationships between language and identity.

As the colonial hegemony of empire fades around the world, the role of language in ethnic conflict has become increasingly topical, as have issues concerning the right of speakers to choose and use their preferred language(s). Such rights are often asserted and defended in response to their being violated. The importance of understanding these events and issues, and their relationship to individual, ethnic, and national identity, is central to research and debate in a range of fields outside of, as well as within, linguistics. This book provides a clearly written introduction for linguists and non-specialists alike, presenting basic facts about the role of language in the formation of identity and the preservation of culture. It articulates and explores categories of conflict and language rights abuses through detailed presentation of illustrative case studies, and distills from these key cross-linguistic and cross-cultural generalizations.