社会调查研究方法 (40).pdfVIP

The role of social networks in the post-colonial multilingual island of Palau: Mechanisms of language maintenance and shift1 KAZUKO MATSUMOTO Abstract This paper aims to reveal mechanisms of language maintenance and shift in the rural post-colonial multilingual island community of Palau in the Western Pacific, using social networks as an explanatory framework. I explore the usefulness of social networks from three perspectives, investi- gating whether and how social networks can explain changes in the use of former colonial languages in a post-colonial community; the functions of strong and weak ties in a multilingual community; and the social charac- teristics of communities in which social network as an analytical tool may have an explanatory force. Methodological and theoretical issues involved with the concept of social network are also scrutinised. With some cautions about the limits to the explanations made possible by network analysis, I conclude that the social network is indeed a valuable and important social variable in sociolinguistic investigations, alongside other factors, such as sex and identity. Keywords: social network analysis; language maintenance and shift; mul- tilingualism; postcolonial community; Japanese diaspora 1. Introduction ‘Social network’ was one of the first social variables recognised as poten- tially alternative or complementary to ‘socio-economic class’ in sociolin- guistics.2 Social network models have been applied to communities where the social class distribution of community speakers is uneven or problematic: e.g. small rural and non-industrialised communities (Gal 1979; Holmquist 1985; Lippi-Green 1989); urban ethnic minority com- munities (V. Edwards 1986); urban migrant or immigrant communities