Language Attitude among the Displaced People in the Kurdistan Region

• Main Author: R. M. Ameen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kemerovo State University 2019-12-01
• Series: Вестник Кемеровского государственного университета
• Subjects: language attitude; ethnic language; language of the majority; displaced people; migrated region; social values; cultural values
• Online Access: https://vestnik.kemsu.ru/jour/article/view/4521

This paper focuses on the language attitudes of the displaced people who fled to the Kurdistan region of Iraq due to having the daily threats on their life by the terrorist groups since 2003. These people are mostly from Arabic nation and came from the different parts of the country, the language of analysis and the chosen social group contributing to the novelty of the research. The research aims at exploring the level of attitudes and the factors which affected the motivation of these people either towards their ethnic languages or Kurdish (the language of the majority in the region). It is shown that the majority of the displaced people in the region still have a positive attitude towards their ethnic language, are proud of it while having quite normal attitudes towards Kurdish, and believe that it is necessary for communication with other constituents, for getting jobs and conducting business and in order to spread social and cultural values of the Kurdish society. Here can be seen that the migrated people, who had about a hundred year history of ethnic problems with the Kurds of Iraq, nowadays have a normal attitudes towards Kurdish language.