Why Do People Switch Their Language?
Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - 09:32
in Psychology & Sociology
Due to increasing globalization, the linguistic landscape of our world is changing; many people give up use of one language in favour of another, a phenomenon called language shift. Katharina Prochazka and Gero Vogl from the University of Vienna have studied why language shift happens using the example of southern Carinthia, Austria. Making use of methods originally developed in diffusion physics to study the motion of atoms, they built a model for the spread and retreat of languages over time and space. With this model, they were able to show that interaction with other speakers is the main factor influencing whether language shift occurs. The interdisciplinary study is published in the journal PNAS.