How does language contribute to ethnic conflict

Conflict plays a role in many social sciences. Linguistically, conflict between different ethnic groups often results from language contact. Problems viewed as political, economic or sociological in nature are often actually rooted in linguistic conflict. In the literature, however, contact has overshadowed conflict. In addition, the emphasis in contact research has traditionally focussed on closed, homogeneous groups rather than on urban industrial societies in which social and linguistic conflict are important factors.

Language contact and conflict are seen as interdependently related elements applicable both to individuals and to language communities, yet these phenomena occur only between speakers of languages, not between languages per se.

This overview describes the characteristics of language conflict and looks at the areas of emphasis in the literature, including multilingualism and linguistic identity, glottophagia and minority/majority relations, the danger of reliance on language censuses, conflict resolution/avoidance, and the importance of ecolinguistics in conflict description and for research in the area of linguistic conflict.

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