Language geography

Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy is the study of place names. Landscape ethnoecology, also known as ethnophysiography, is the study of landscape ontologies and how they are expressed in language. There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language: geography of languages, which deals with the distribution through history and space of languages, and/or is concerned with 'the analysis of the distribution patterns and spatial structures of languages in contact'. geolinguistics being, when used as a sub-discipline of geography, the study of the 'political, economic and cultural processes that affect the status and distribution of languages'. When perceived as a sub-discipline of linguistics that incorporates contact linguistics, one definition appearing has been 'the study of languages and dialects in contact and in conflict with various societal, economic, ideological, political and other contemporary trends with regard to a particular geographic location and on a planetary scale'. Various other terms and subdisciplines have been suggested, but none gained much currency, including: linguistic geography, which deals with regional linguistic variations within languages, also called dialect geography, which some consider a subdivision of geolinguistics a division within the examination of linguistic geography separating the studies of change over time and space; Many studies in what is now called contact linguistics have researched the effect of language contact, as the languages or dialects (varieties) of peoples have interacted. This territorial expansion of language groups has usually resulted in the overlaying of languages upon existing speech areas, rather than the replacement of one language by another. For example, after the Norman Conquest of England, Old French became the language of the aristocracy...