AN OVERVIEW OF MINORITY LANGUAGES GROUP STATUS IN AUSTRALIAN MULTILINGUAL LANDSCAPE

Abstract

The paper focuses on the status of immigrant languages in comparison with English in Australia with the documentary research instrument as the primary methodology. The published studies reveal that a multilingual and multi-cultural country like Australia has been experiencing the increase of migrants from various parts of the world, therefore language landscape has been enriched by many voices. A noticeable finding is that English language as a de facto national language has imprinted on the language of immigrant communities but sometimes the community languages adapt English in their own ways. Thus, community languages pose distinctive structural characteristics, specifically, transference, integration and code-switching. Transference and integration express purely structural or grammatical adaption influenced by English. Meanwhile, code-switching shows the linguistic behaviour of speakers of immigrant communities with a striking fact that code-switching is practised much more by second generation who are younger or Australia-born members in community. Besides, the study also cares about the maintenance and loss of those minority languages in Australia. They connect closely to language shift, therefore the more the speakers shift to English, the less community languages survive. As a result, the communities themselves will be primarily responsible for maintaining their mother tongues though Australian government shows a strong support in this issue with positive policies