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FormatJournal Article
Author, AnalyticVan Ness, Silke
Title, AnalyticOhio Amish Women in the Vanguard of a Language Change: Pennsylvania German in Ohio
Journal TitleAmerican Speech
Date of PublicationSpring 1995
Volume ID70
Issue ID1
Location in Work69-80
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Abstract"Over the last 15 years, inquiry into the place of the individual within social networks has contributed to our understanding of how linguistic variables spread through a community. Essentially, a social network contributes two important linguistic functions: maintenance of features on the one hand, and rapid diffusion of incoming changes on the other. If we combine this concept of social network with Kroch's suggestion that 'social groups tend to mark themselves off symbolically,' we get a setting that is most germane to the younger Ohio Amish population. . . . However, PG children and adolescents studied in Ohio have no overt, external mechanism to signal their own uniqueness. At some point, the younger Amish women evidently started to use language to define their own identity in terms of 'modernity.'"
NotesIncludes bibliographical notes and references.
Call NumberDigital file (PDF)
MKI TermsPennsylvania German/ Women/ Linguistics/ German Americans -- Ohio/ Amish/ Language maintenance