Family language policies among Albanian immigrants in Greece

Abstract

This article reports on an investigation of family language policies among 37 Albanian immigrant families in Northern Greece within the framework of Spolsky's language policy model. Data collection was based on semi-directed interviews with parents which were analysed using both content and discourse analysis. According to our findings, three groups of families were observed in our sample. A small number of families (n=4) did not transmit the ethnic language to their children and showed no interest in maintaining ties with the homeland. In another group of families (n=12) positive attitudes towards ethnic language maintenance were accompanied by specific language management efforts and language practices in support of the ethnic language. However, the majority of our informants (n=21) did not engage in such efforts, even though they, too, expressed positive attitudes towards Albanian language maintenance. We argue that although most immigrant parents may share positive attitudes towards ethnic language maintenance, they may differ as to whether they embrace bilingualism as an asset or accept the dominant ideology according to which the simultaneous development of two languages may hinder the development of the majority language.