Speech Islands, Island Speech

Course Description

Summary

Are islands only geographic, or can they be social?  Can a community be an island, the way an island can be a community?  For almost two centuries, linguists have used the metaphor of “speech islands” to describe groups of people speaking one language who live surrounded by speakers of another.  These communities may be separated by some distance from others they share a language with, or their language may be unique in the world, not shared by anyone else at all.  When theorists first labeled these “islands”, they attributed to them traits that they – as many in mainland societies – traditionally associated with the term: isolation; insularity; resistance to change.

Is this how islands really are, though?  Recent scholarship from linguistics and beyond has shown that island societies are instead frequently interconnected, dynamic and mobile.  In this course, we will explore the traditional idea of “speech islands” hand-in-hand with ever-accumulating findings about language use on (actual!) islands.  We will apply what we learn in our work to re-evaluate the suitability of the theoretical concept, by ascertaining what metaphorical speech islands and true island speech hold in common -- and, critically, what they do not.