Understanding Language Death in Czech-Moravian Texas

• Authors: Kevin Hannan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Based on several decades of personal interaction with Texas speakers of Czech, the author's article attempts to correlate social change with some specific stages of language obsolescence and language death. Many instances of language change in that community, as well as cultural and social change, may be explained by the linguistic model known as the wave theory. One hundred and fifty years passed between the introduction of Czech and the death of that language in Texas. From the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, the Czech-Moravians represented a closed community in which individuals defined their identity primarily by the Czech language, ethnicity, and culture. In the final five decades of the twentieth century, as the social template representing Texas speakers of Czech disintegrated, spoken Czech ceased to function as a living language, and much of the ancestral culture connected with the language was lost. Today some among the elderly, described as semi-speakers, terminal speakers, or "rememberers" of language, retain a limited knowledge, but the ancestral language now has only a symbolic function.

Keywords

EN

language change; language death; language obsolescence; sociolinguistics; Czech

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 5
• Pages: 147-163

Dates

published

2007-01-01

online

2007-12-18

Contributors

author

Kevin Hannan

• University of Łódź

References

• Alba, R. 1985. "The twilight of ethnicity among Americans of European ancestry: The case of Italians". Ethnic and Racial Studies 8: 134-158.
• Bělič, J. 1972. Nástin české dialektologie. Praha: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství.
• Chambers, J. K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• Conzen, K. N., D. A. Gerber, E. Morawska, G. E. Pozzetta, and R. J. Vecoli. 1992. "The invention of ethnicity: A perspective from the U.S.A.". Journal of American Ethnic History 12: 3-41.
• Coulmas, F. (ed.). 1997. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
• Craig, C. G. 1997. "Language contact and language degeneration". In: Coulmas, F. (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 257-270.
• Denison, N. 1977. "Language death or language suicide?". International Journal of the Sociology of Language 12: 13-22.
• Dorian, N. 1981. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Dorian, N. (ed.). 1989. Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
• Dutkova, L. 1999. "Texas Czech of Texas Czechs: An ethnolinguistic perspective on language use in a dying language community". Brown Slavic Contributions. Vol. XI: Modern Czech Studies, 2-10.
• Dutkova-Cope, L. 2001a. "The language of Czech Moravians in Texas: Do you know what ‘Párknu káru u hauza’ means?". Southwest Journal of Linguistics 20: 51-84.
• Dutkova-Cope, L. 2001b. "Texas Czech: The language of Texans who say they speak ‘a different type of Czech’". Southwest Journal of Linguistics 20, 29-69.
• Dutkova-Cope, L. 2001c. "The future of Czech in Texas: ‘How can you learn something if it's not offered to you?’". Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal 14: 80-104.
• Eckert, E. 1993. "Language change: Testimony of tombstone inscriptions at the cemetery of Praha, Texas". In: Eckert, E. (ed.), Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi Editions, 189-215.
• Eckert, E. 2003. Kameny na prerii: Čestí vystěhovalci v Texasu (Stones on the prairie: Czech immigrants in Texas). Prague: Nakladatelstvi Lidove noviny.
• Eckert, E. and K. Hannan. Forthcoming, 2006. "Vernacular writing and sociolinguistic change in the Texas Czech community". Journal of Slavic Linguistics.
• Eva, E. (ed.). 1993. Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi Editions.
• Hannan, K. 2003. "Reflections on assimilation and language death in Czech-Moravian Texas". Kosmas. Czechoslovak and Central European Journal 16.2: 110-132.
• Hannan, K. 2004. "From one monolingualism to another: Ethnic assimilation as a product of language displacement in Czech-Moravian Texas". Český lid 91: 235-252.
• Morris, N. 1994. A History of the S.P.J.S.T. A Texas Chronicle 1897-1980. Temple, TX: SPJST.
• Myers-Scotton, C. 1993. Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Smith, C. S. 2001. "Texas Czech: A study in language death," Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal 14: 65-79.
• Weber, R. L. 1986. "Partially annotated bibliography of language death". Notes on Linguistics 34: 5-24.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10015-007-0006-2