Language and Ethnicity Among a Group of Pentalingual Albuquerqueans

The Khoja Ismailis of the Indian subcontinent have spoken two languages in a mildly unstable diglossic relationship for centuries. From the mid-nineteenth century to the 1970s there was a steady, large scale immigration of Khoja Ismailis to East Africa. The changing situation in the subcontinent along with the experience in Africa resulted in many of these people learning three additional languages. Descriptions of the situation in Africa suggested the hypothesis that three of the languages may have stood in a direct relationship to three different concentric levels of ethnic identity, while the other two languages may have been used in different kinds of outgroup interactions. Interviews with Ismailis who have immigrated to Albuquerque from East Africa (and with their ethnic neighbors) indicate that the relationship between language use and ethnic life is not that simple. One unanticipated result of the this research is a possible approach to defining ethnic boundaries, an approach involving a notion of shared ethnic subcategorization systems.