The Integration of Language and Society

About the Research Project

Each language bears an imprint of the society that speaks it — speakers' relationships to each other, their beliefs and ways of viewing the world, and other facets of their social environment, alongside speakers' habitat, subsistence, and physical environment. The way society is integrated with the language spoken by the community is reflected in many linguistic features, also summed up under the notion of language ecology. These include gender and classifiers, information source, speech styles, and ways of telling stories. 

Impact

We focus on the ways in which highly complex minority languages of Amazonia, New Guinea, and Northern Australia reflect their traditional societies and how they change with the encroaching modernity, in collaboration with communities in Brazil, PNG, and North Queensland.

Partners

• The University of Sydney
• Universität zu Köln: University of Cologne
• Leiden University