Abstract
Australia is a multicultural society in which over 300 different indigenous and migrant languages are spoken. While its cultural diversity is often celebrated, Australia’s linguistic diversity is still at risk due to the inherent monolingual mindset (cf. Clyne 2005) of its population. In this paper, we use a cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on both historical and sociolinguistic sources, to investigate some of the major causes of language shift among first- and subsequent generations of post-war German-speaking migrants in Australia. While historical and societal changes have provided greater opportunities for German to be maintained as a heritage language in Australia, these developments may have come too late or have not been effective in the face of English as the dominant language in Australia and as a global language. Our investigation indicates that Australians with German as a heritage language, like many other migrant groups, are still at a high risk of shift to English, despite recent opportunities for language maintenance provided by modern society.
Highlights
IntroductionOn the other hand, Fishman’s (2001c: 81) broader definition of “heritage language” emphasises the cultural, historical, and emotional connection with the speaker’s linguistic past, where “a particular family relevance” is central to the maintenance, use, revitalisation, and learning and teaching of the immigrant group’s language(s)
The German language has had a presence in Australia since the earliest settlement of the continent by Europeans
We begin with a brief discussion of the use of “heritage language” and “community language” terminology in the literature on migrant languages before describing the current German-speaking population of Australia
Summary
On the other hand, Fishman’s (2001c: 81) broader definition of “heritage language” emphasises the cultural, historical, and emotional connection with the speaker’s linguistic past, where “a particular family relevance” is central to the maintenance, use, revitalisation, and learning and teaching of the immigrant group’s language(s) His definition of “heritage language” considers first- and subsequent generations of migrants to the United States (and by extension, other countries as well), and does not focus solely on the linguistic repertoire of the second. Heritage language and its backward-looking connotations appear to be more appropriate in the case study considered here For these reasons, we shall use the term “heritage language” ( abbreviated to HL) to emphasise the common linguistic heritage among migrants of the first or subsequent generations with ancestry in the German-speaking areas of Europe
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