City and language. Role of cities and towns in shaping language situation

Authors

  • Roman Szul Centrum Europejskich Studiów Regionalnych i Lokalnych, Uniwersytet Warszawski, 00-927 Warszawa, ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 30 image/svg+xml

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2300-0562.02.04

Keywords:

city (town), hinterland, language situation, linguistic diversification, linguistic homogenisation, linguistic contacts

Abstract

Cities and towns play a significant role in shaping language situation in countries and regions. In cities and towns two language mechanisms are working: diversification and simplification of language situation. Diversification results from immigration to cities (towns), simplification – from contacts of peoples inside the city (town). In extreme cases of rapid inflow of peoples of various languages to the city (town) difficulties in mutual communication of inhabitants can emerge (“Babel tower effect”). In the 19th century such a situation was in Lodz and Bialystok. Simplification of the language situation in a city (town) runs through the stage of common language and bi-lingualism of a part of the population. An important issue is which language becomes the common, and consequently, the only language, of the city (town). It depends on numerical, economic and political strength of ethno-linguistic groups in the city (town), on prestige of individual languages and, in contemporary world, on language policy of a given country or region. Different socio-professional characteristics of urban and rural populations often make that from the ethno-linguistic point of view cities (towns) differ from their rural hinterland. City (town) and its hinterland are in contact which leads to a change of the language situation – to an “absorption” of the city (town) by the hinterland or to expansion of language of the city (town) and assimilation of the hinterland by the city (town), or to equilibrium and tensions over the language between the city (town) and its hinterland (as nowadays in Brussels). Cities (towns) by forming a network of contacts create favourable conditions for expansion of the most important language in a given country (or empire), which in modern times (the 19th and 20th centuries) was used for cultural and linguistic homogenisation of populations in the process of building nation states.

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Published

2013-01-01

How to Cite

Szul, R. (2013). City and language. Role of cities and towns in shaping language situation. Studies in Political and Historical Geography, 2, 63–85. https://doi.org/10.18778/2300-0562.02.04