Cross-nationally, urbanization is associated with the decline of minority languages and a shift towards national and official languages. But the processes that link urbanization with language shift have not been adequately documented. In this paper we consider the relationship between cities and language shift from a sociolinguistic perspective,…

As English skills are being increasingly perceived as valuable human capital, an awareness of inequitable access to the acquisition of this "profitable" language has developed. Although this allegedly unequal access, which can be referred to as the "English divide", is a matter of concern to applied linguists, little research…