Keele kestlikkuse ja kao konstrueerimine poolavalikes diskursustes
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND LOSS IN SEMI-PUBLIC DISCOURSES

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents an analysis of the construction of language maintenance and loss in semi-public discourses of Estonians living in Germany and Finland, and of Setu and Võru speakers. The data was gathered by the international interdisciplinary project European Language Diversity for All, which focuses on speakers of small or less used Finno-Ugric languages in contemporary multilingual societies. Estonians living in Germany and Finland represent allochthonous language communities, whereas Setu and Võru speakers form autochthonous Estonian speech communities; the demarcation between the two groups is somewhat problematic. All of the speech communities consist of multilingual Estonians who have managed to maintain their minority languages to a lesser or greater extent in majority language contexts, i.e. in German, Finnish and Estonian language environments. Besides discourse analysis, the self-reported language competences of people of different ages are briefly analysed. The discourse of language maintenance and loss can be seen as a discourse of legitimation, where arguments about the functions and futures of minority languages are expressed. One of the explicit results is that all informants remain within the framework of linguistic, cultural or economic enrichment, without considering linguistic rights.

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