ABSTRACT
Language matters for people on the move. It is part of the identity of diaspora and, in some cases, it can be the only connection one has with the ancestral land from which the community has dispersed. When diasporas move across space and change over time, they have to make decisions about the extent to which they can maintain the heritage language or adopt the language of the new place of residence. Language then becomes a symbolic and mobile resource that diasporic communities utilize for strategic purposes. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the last two decades, migration and diaspora have become important topics for applied linguists who are concerned with real-world issues in which language plays a central role (Brumfit 1995: 27). A number of questions linking language, migration and diaspora have been addressed in some depth by applied linguists. These include, as reviewed in Li Wei and Zhu Hua (2013): How and why do migrants maintain ‘old’ languages, namely languages of their heritage? How and why do they learn ‘new’ languages, namely languages of their new place of residence? How do migrants negotiate languages, social relationships, identities and ideologies in the family, the community and the workplace? And how do they choose from their multilingual repertoire to communicate in institutional settings such as schools, health and medical services, legal, social and public service encounters?
