The Impact of Language on Resilience in Georgia's Minority Communities

Abstract

This paper is intended as a contribution to discussions of the concept of resilience in linguistics, with a focus on minority language speakers in Georgia. For our study, representatives of three of Georgia’s largest minority groups - Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Chechens - have been interviewed. The sociolinguistic situations of the respective speech communities in Georgia only partially overlap, but all three ethnolinguistic communities maintain a strong cultural identity and they rarely engage in ethnically mixed relationships. The goal of the study is to give insights into the current language situation seen from the native speakers' viewpoint and to testify as to whether language attitude and knowledge can benefit the resilience of minorities in the majority community.