Ethnic Language Use as a Symbol of Keeping the Nation’s Culture and Traditions (the Case of the Displaced Peoples' Languages in the Kurdistan Region)
Abstract
The research focuses on the role of ethnic language in keeping culture and traditions of the displaced people who fled to the Kurdistan region of Iraq due to the threats on their lives. It aims at exploring the use of the displaced people’s ethnic language in different occasions in daily activities and the ways it determines the language maintenance and, consequently, favours the displaced peoples’ culture and traditions. It is shown that family, religion, media, emotional and psychological sphere of a human’s life are the domains which can be considered the most effective ones, as ethnic language keeps its dominance there. The novelty of the research is clear due to the vast research interest to such a high migrated region with a changing political situation as Kurdistan. The conducted sociolinguistic analysis of the language situation in this region is the first among its linguistic studies and serves a basis for further research work.