From its beginnings to the present, research in the field of language maintenance and shift has advocated the preservation of ethnic minority and immigrant languages. This review of current published literature, which continues that advocacy, focuses on a narrow time frame (approximately 1998–2002) in order to provide broad, worldwide coverage of different language contact situations. The discussion largely excludes questions of language policy and planning, but includes studies that use traditional as well as newer methodologies to illuminate how educational institutions, the media, ethnic language literacy, family relationships, and friendship networks—to name the more significant factors in maintenance—can be employed to encourage maintenance and language revitalization. After considering recent theoretical and critical works, this review surveys various countries in which research within ethnic and minority language communities illuminates language maintenance, or shift, or revitalization for that group. Current research suggests that use of the ethnic language in the family and friendship networks and its transgenerational transmission are still of crucial importance, as are the conditions in the greater society that provide support for its linguistic viability as a means of communication within and outside the immediate community.
Throughout his book, Shuy is careful to distinguish what linguists can do from what they cannot do. In the final chapter, for instance, he discusses limitations on the extent to which linguists can assist in identifying lying and deception. He also discusses the interesting question of why prosecutors make less use of forensic linguists than defense lawyers do. The style of this book, like that of Shuy's earlier books on the role of language in judicial process (1993, 1998a, 1998b, 2002), is informal and is therefore accessible for all interested readers. Some readers may wish for more scholarly apparatus (citations to legal opinions and law review articles, in particular), but some references and cases are cited. Overall, this book constitutes a significant contribution to the rapidly growing and expanding field of forensic linguistics. It is also a text that is highly accessible for students, who have demonstrated increasing interest in the field in recent years. It is definitely a must for the library of any serious forensic linguist, and it is a useful tool for getting acquainted with an area many find unfamiliar or intimidating.
The term caló is well-known within many Mexican American communities as a bilingual slang that is one of several speech styles in the community repertoire, closely associated with Pachuco groups of the U.S. Southwest that came to prominence in the 1940's. But the term caló predates its introduction to the U.S. by many decades. With roots in a Romany-based germanio of the 16th century, from the speech of immigrant gypsies evolved a new Spanish-based argot, the result of language shift from Romany to Spanish over centuries. By the 19th century, caló referred to a Spanish-based criminal argot called “caló jergal” by a contemporaneous Spanish researcher (Salillas 1896), a mixed code of gypsy Romany and Peninsular Spanish which was used by members of that group as an in-group, secret speech style.
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