On the Linguistic Covariants of Cultural Assimilation

Linguistic importation is a very common feature of temporary alien residents who maintain the belief that they are on alien soil temporarily & that they will soon return their homeland. An alien community, however, if stable, tends to move into another phase of linguistic assimilation. When linguistic importation has begun, linguistic substitution occurs. Bilingual individuals have good facility in 2 languages. A bilingual is a person capable of inter-sentence code-switching or contextually determined code-switching in discourse. Code-switching can be triggered by a variety of lexical substitutions, & by the need for private or exclusive communication. Considerations of frequency & context point to non-stable bilingualism, in that the language used more frequently will be strengthened at the expense of the other. Thus, true bilingualism takes place only at a point in time & bilingualism is not a stable phenomenon at the microlevel. Bilingual development may be summarized as processes of progression of linguistic behavior & of cultural assimilation (1 Table) L. Freer