Gender in the Construction and Transmission of Ethnolinguistic Identities and Language Maintenance in Immigrant Australia*

Abstract

The relevance and impact of gender and/or sex roles have long been recognized in the transmission of languages in situations of language contact. More recent studies of multilingualism, second language learning and language maintenance have moved beyond the investigation of gender roles to looking at gendered identities and questions of language maintenance/shift. Here we build upon these developments and examine the ways in which masculinities and femininities constrain and enable language maintenance practices and transmission of the community language among bilingual women and men who were born in Australia to immigrant parents (the so-called second generation). In particular we explore the gendered practices of ‘maintaining the community language’ among ‘second-generation’ women and men of Greek and German descent and discuss the construction of gendered ethnolinguistic identities and the survival of the respective community languages in Australia.