Language Geography Flashcards, test questions and answers

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What is Language Geography?

Language geography is the study of how language is distributed in geographic space. It considers how a variety of factors, such as politics, culture, mobility and migrations, shape language use in different areas. Language geography looks at the development of languages over space and time, as well as their diffusion and interaction with other languages. Through this field of study, researchers can gain insight into the linguistic diversity that exists around the world today. Language geography often examines how macro-level trends such as population growth or migrationaffect micro-level phenomena like language use in communities. This field also studies the relationship between language and identity: how people use certain dialects to mark their belonging to a particular place or group. Language geography also looks at language contact situationswhere two or more languages interactand explores their effects on each other over time.In addition to shedding light on regional differences within one language family (e.g., dialect distinctions), this field also maps out global patterns of linguistic diversity and similarity. For example, researchers have used technology to map out the spread of English across the world; they’ve found that English has been adopted by many non-native speakers due to its status as a lingua franca across much of Europe and North America. Finally, language geography serves an important role in informing public policy decisions about education and multilingualism initiatives around the worldfrom establishing bilingual schools in Canada’s French-speaking provinces to implementing official bilingualism policies in Rwanda’s courts system.