Minority Language Maintenance Research Articles

Youth’s individual language policy in shaping family-community citizenship

ABSTRACT This study examines minority youth’s daily language life in the family and ethnic community domains. It focuses on young ethnic minorities in a subtractive language context in Vietnam and how they construct their individual language policy through their language practices, beliefs and management in responding to language policies of the family and community of which they are members. Ethnographic interviews with college-age students were the main data sources. Findings suggest that the youth’s L1-oriented individual language policy was strongly informed by their family and ethnic community’s (in)visible language policies, peer culture and the culture of respect, as well as the broader local and mainstream social settings. The youth’s individual language policy reflected their awareness of family and community desires for them to speak the ethnic language and nurture positive L1 attitudes tying to their family-community citizenship. Developing young people’s sense of family-community citizenship through language, as well as building family – community partnership for conserving a common L1-priority policy among members, may be potential grassroots initiatives which can help effectuate minority language maintenance efforts.

Bilingual and Spanish Language Media in the U.S. as a Language Maintenance Tool Among Latinx Communities

In this paper, we discuss the status and vitality of Spanish in the U.S., including the presence and characteristics of Spanish-language communicative spaces, including the media and other digital venues. Given the discrimination that many Latinx Spanish speakers suffer in the U.S., for example, through English-only initiatives or restrictive language policies, we draw attention to the important role that communicative spaces such as media have in this country for promoting and aiding the maintenance of heritage and minority languages. We also critique the monolingual assumptions that there are only certain types of “correct” language, in this case, standard Spanish or “Walter Cronkite Spanish,” which implies a variety as it is used in a country where the official language is Spanish (e.g., Mexico or Colombia). We are interested in looking at how Spanish is used and promoted and the role of U.S. media in contexts where audiences are mostly bilingual. We argue that U.S. Spanish, as it is spoken by Chicanx/Latinx speakers, has been historically undervalued or underrepresented in the media, thus perpetuating monolingual ideologies that do not serve bilingual and multilingual audiences and indeed affect the perception of local varieties of Spanish and their speakers. With the advent of new technologies and the sociodemographic transformation of Latinx audiences, new media production in U.S. Spanish, Spanglish, and other local varieties have the potential of serving as an important tool to combat language loss due to linguistic discrimination and harmful hegemonic monolingual ideologies.

Language Policies and Minority Language Maintenance: The Case of Circassian in Turkey

Guided by language maintenance and shift (Fishman, 1991) as a theoretical construct, this study explored the sociolinguistic situation and the maintenance of Circassian, a Northwest Caucasian language, spoken in Turkey since the Ottoman Era. To explore the impacts of official language ideologies and policies on the maintenance of Circassian, five participants from different age groups and regions of Turkey were interviewed using linguistic life story interviews (Atkinson 1998). As part of its socio-historical focus, the study first highlights some of the Circassian initiatives that played an important role in maintaining the language during the Ottoman Era and addresses the changes in language ideologies and policies after the declaration of the Turkish Republic. Similar to other ethnolinguistic minorities' experiences in Turkey (Aslan, 2007; Seloni & Sarfati, 2013), the life story interviews revealed the impacts of assimilationist language policies in educational and social settings. Findings also revealed the long-lasting impact of the Citizen Speak Turkish policy (1928-1945) on the maintenance of Circassian and its negative impact on the generational transfer which has not been explored by former research. The findings have implications for language policymakers, Circassian NGOs, and Circassian speakers in Turkey to maintain and transfer the language to future generations.

Has language as resource been the basis for mother-tongue instruction in Sweden? On the evolution of policy orientations towards a uniquely enduring bilingual policy

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden’s mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz’s (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

Life satisfaction of 10-year-olds in a bilingual context in France: the predictive role of parental language practices and children’s use of the minority language

ABSTRACT The transmission and maintenance of minority languages is at the core of family issues that can influence children’s life satisfaction. It is only very recently that family language policy studies have turned their attention to the socio-emotional domain. This study examined some predictors (parental language practices, children’s minority and majority language skills, their language use at home) of the life satisfaction of 86 children aged 10, living in France in a bilingual context, and whose language practiced at home is minorated. The children individually and collectively filled out questionnaires about their life satisfaction, their language practices, those of their parents and their own language skills. The results indicate that the parents’ language practices and the children’s use of languages at home are the only two variables that significantly predict the children’s life satisfaction. Although linked to their life satisfaction, the children’s skills in the minority language do not have a significant impact in the tested model. The data of this study thus tends to open new avenues for reflection on the place of child well-being in the study of family language policies.

Digital Technologies, Social Media, Global and Local Languages in Southeast Asia

This article aligns with the theme, “Overcoming Adversity, Embracing Change: Addressing Challenges in Language and Culture in Asia”, and with the call for papers for this conference. It takes an optimistic but critical stand on questions of digital technologies, including social media in multilingual societies. The telephone, radio, television and more recently the internet were all in their turn (wrongly) seen as heralding the demise of normal face-to-face communication, and as threatening the continued existence of minority indigenous languages in multilingual nations. But the Chinese traditional saying, “A crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind”, remains relevant in the pandemic and post-pandemic era. Technologies are not in themselves language-specific, nor are they necessarily biased towards powerful, global languages. Social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and others do not force users to shift towards Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic or English. I discuss examples of mixed language use in Southeast Asian social media contexts, taking up the point raised by Deterding (2020, 175) in his article based on his keynote presentation at the previous conference in this series: “perhaps trying to analyse the different languages in Brunei as distinct entities is flawed. In the modern globalised world, languages no longer belong in distinct boxes that can be neatly labelled”. The key argument is that the mixing of local vernacular and powerful global languages does not necessarily signal an impending language shift. On the contrary, such hybrid discoursal practices in social media may be viewed as a minority language maintenance and survival strategy.

Maintenance of minority languages and economic viability of minorities in the mirror of the Transcarpathian linguistic landscape

The study examines the linguistic landscape of the territories of Transcarpathia (Ukraine) whichare mostly inhabited by Hungarians in the context of language and economy. It will be presentedhow economically prestigious world languages, English and Russian are displayed in this region.We show that economic realities suppress the nationalism of the minority int he linguistic landscape.We note that the language policy in support of the language maintenance of the nationalminority can not be successful if it is not related to the development of the economy. If we want toimprove the economic situation of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia in a multilingual environment,the teaching of languages is one of the areas where it is necessary to invest.

ITE provision in minority language contexts

AbstractWithin the broader contexts of language maintenance, revitalisation and use, schools have an important role to play in the early transmission of minority or minoritized languages. Through effective classroom-based practices, teachers can offer rich, continuous linguistic experiences for the young people they teach that can lead to long-term, sustained engagement with language over time. How effective a given approach or practice may be in delivering a linguistic outcome in different contexts depends to a large extent on the skills and competence of the teacher involved (Fitzpatrick et al., 2018, p. 59), and the skills and competence of the teacher are usually rooted in their early experiences as student teachers. Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes are therefore central to the delivery of effective classroom-based practices and fundamental in generating autonomous teachers who can explore critically the different pedagogical approaches as they pertain to minority language contexts. This paper provides a comparative overview of the current issues and challenges facing ITE for primary education in two distinct minority language settings, namely Wales and Ireland. Both settings provide Welsh-medium or Irish-medium immersion education, as well as English-medium education offering Welsh or Irish as statutory subjects up to age 16. Both contexts also offer ITE programmes through the medium of Welsh or Irish, catering specifically for those student teachers wishing to teach in immersion settings. Both contexts face a number of shared challenges in terms of the content, design and delivery of an effective ITE programme for the context. We therefore highlight areas in which resources and methodologies could be shared amongst all those involved in ITE where minority language maintenance is a key component of education.

Technology and minority language: an Android-based dictionary development for the Lampung language maintenance in Indonesia

ABSTRACT Although a considerable amount of research on the Lampung language has been done, little attention has been paid to the use of technology-based Lampung language maintenance. Therefore, academic and practical efforts should be made to contribute to the local language maintenance and one of the possible solutions is through technology. The aim of the present study was to develop an Android-based bilingual dictionary application for smartphones for language maintenance. This study adopted developmental research with three phases (analysis, product design and development, and product try-out and evaluation). The data was collected through instruments including literature reviews, interviews, expert judgments, and questionnaires followed by descriptive analyses. The results indicate that the development of an Android-based Lampung language dictionary application for smartphones has successfully contributed to Lampung language maintenance and preservation. The Android-based application is positively perceived as a form of minority language maintenance and preservation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era. The study’s implications and recommendations are also discussed for future research.

Turkish heritage families in Sweden: language practices and family language policy

ABSTRACT This paper explores family language policy in Turkish-speaking families in Sweden. Questionnaires were administered to the parents of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age 4 − 7), targeting family language practices (including parent–parent, parent–child, child–parent, child-and-sibling conversation and language-fostering activities such as joint book reading, storytelling and mother tongue tuition), and parental language beliefs and attitudes. Despite much diversity in family types concerning parents’ education, country of birth, native language and ethnic affiliation (e.g. Kurdish), common traits emerge: There is a strong focus on the transmission of Turkish in the home, in the face of early and extensive Swedish pre-school attendance. Parents mostly speak Turkish with the child. However, Sweden-born parents report higher uses of Swedish in the home, and sibling interaction also drives a shift towards Swedish. Parental education appears to affect Turkish joint reading activities. Most parents consider proficiency in Turkish and Swedish as equally important for their children. Parents who rank Turkish higher do not necessarily show more maintenance efforts, pointing to some inconsistency between attitudes and practices. Overall, the family language practices observed indicate strong bilingual ideologies and strong language maintenance ideologies, in line with Swedish official state-level language policy, which supports bilingualism and minority language maintenance.

Translanguaging: a pedagogical concept that went wandering

ABSTRACT The term translanguaging goes back more than a quarter-century, originating in the domain of the teaching of Welsh, but it has over the years developed a wide variety of usages. While translanguaging is claimed to have advantages over other language education models, many of its new interpretations, which take it some distance from its original pedagogical sense, are seen by some as problematic. The new conceptualizations go beyond the pedagogical practice of drawing on multiple language varieties in order to facilitate learning; they, indeed, often extend to general, overarching accounts of language deployment among multilinguals, which sometimes do not differentiate between individual language competencies. Proponents of translanguaging in its more traditional sense point to pedagogical advantages and opportunities it presents in the (language) classroom. Even in this context, however, there is debate about the appropriateness of utilizing translanguaging in, for example, minority language maintenance contexts. In this article, we explore the variety of uses of the term translanguaging and the attendant claims attached to them. Our conclusion is that the critical factor in the capacity of the term to retain coherence and intelligibility is the maintenance of constant awareness of and attention to the perspective in which it is applied.

Minority language maintenance and the production‐prescription interface: Number agreement in New York Yiddish

AbstractStandardization is a focus of language maintenance efforts in many, but not all, minority language communities. What is the impact of this choice on interspeaker variation in maintained languages? This study investigates variable number agreement in Yiddish, a minority language spoken by two distinct communities in the New York area: (1) Hasidic Jews, who maintain the language without standardization, and (2) Yiddishists, who are overtly committed to maintaining a “correct” Yiddish. An analysis of data from 40 sociolinguistic interviews shows that Yiddishists have significantly higher rates of normative agreement than Hasidim do. The Yiddishists’ standard language ideology has also contributed to a leveling of the differences across grammatical constructions, a predictor that is more robust among the Hasidic speakers. These community‐based differences in speech reflect differences in speakers’ prescriptive judgments, which were elicited through a novel postinterview text editing task.

Language choice of Vietnamese ethnic minority students in family and community interactions: implications for minority language maintenance

ABSTRACT This article examines Vietnamese ethnic minority students’ experiences of language choice in communication with people of different ages and in different relations to them in their family and ethnolinguistic community. Concepts of power, solidarity and marked and unmarked choices are adapted to examine the students’ strategies of language choice. Interviews with a group of students are used as the main data source. Findings suggest that the mainstream language was set up as the generational solidarity code among young members while the L1 was considered the power code associated with older members of the family and community. These emerging patterns of language choice may result in disruption of everyday in-group language practices among different generations and perpetuate language shift. It is suggested that explicit L1-promotion policies in the community and minority language support in public domains may encourage young people to engage in language management efforts and empower minority languages in the polity.

Grandparents in Minority Language Maintenance: Mandarin Chinese in Canada

This article investigates the role of grandparents in Mandarin Chinese retention by children in Saskatchewan, Canada. The materials for the study come from interviews with 60 Mandarin Chinese/English bi-multilingual children between the ages of 6 and 13 in the families of immigrants from China residing in Saskatchewan, Canada. Additional materials describing bilingual children’s Mandarin language proficiency come from a picture description as well as Chinese characters reading and writing tasks. The interview responses and language proficiency parameters were analyzed with the help of correlation analysis, chi-square (for nonparametric data) and univariate ANOVAs (for parametric data). The results are highly controversial, as on the one hand, they demonstrate that the presence of grandparents residing in the same household as their grandchildren is associated with the grandchildren having fewer non-canonical forms (NCFs referred to in earlier research as errors) in their narratives and fewer phonological NCFs. On the other hand, children who have grandparents residing with them are more likely to have a lower ability to read Mandarin texts with PinYin, spend fewer hours reading in Mandarin, produce more incomplete sentences per utterance, and shorter narratives.

The discourse of the edge: marginal advantage, positioning and linguistic entrepreneurship

AbstractThis contribution discusses some links between the linguistics and the economics of the spirit of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurialism. Whether it is individuals or various social groupings, or even entire societies, a review of policies promoting self-investment in language ability links to a neoliberal economic and political ethos of competition, advantage, meritocracy, innovation and risk-taking; and thereby instantiates an essentially exchange and profit based understanding of communication. The depth and persistence of policy attaching personal and commodified gain to language merges with moral character judgements. I discuss four Asian studies of linguistic entrepreneurship, extracting common elements and differences, and then discuss the project of Asian engagement and language study in Australia. Applying the lens of linguistic entrepreneurship to Australia’s promotion of Asian languages reveals an entire project of national re-formation to foster integration into Asian regional economic and geopolitical arrangements. Much of this national project has been premised on reformulating core purposes of language study around the advantaging of individuals and the nation within an ethos of market competition. Australia’s ambition of national integration into Asia has achieved national consensus, reversing a long history of repudiation of the nation’s Asian geography, yet there are still persisting ideas of orientalism. This is particularly exposed in relation to how Asian Australians’ language skills are treated. Minority language maintenance of Asian languages has been construed as problematic, while Anglo-Australian learners’ acquisition of key trade languages of Asia is celebrated and admired. One result of this is that a considerable part of Australia’s Asia literacy project is in tension with its avowed aim of multiculturalism, which would value all language skills, those of maintenance as much as those of new learning.

Sociolinguistic Aspects and Language Contact: Evidence from Francoprovençal of Apulia

Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate two Francoprovençal speaking communities in the Italian region of Apulia, Faeto and Celle di St. Vito. Despite the regional neighborhood of the two towns, and their common isolation from other Francoprovençal speaking communities, their sociolinguistic conditions are deeply different. They differ in reference to the functional distribution of the languages of the repertoire and speakers’ language uses, and in reference to the degree of ‘permeability’ of Francoprovençal varieties towards Italian and its dialects. The repertoire composition and the relationship between the codes have a key role both for minority language maintenance and for language contact processes. In this perspective, I analyse some language contact phenomena in a sample of speakers discourse. I report correlations between the choice of different code-mixing strategies and three sociolinguistic variables (age, sex and village), but not with occupation.

Where are the new languages?

The use of the ecology metaphor is widespread in language studies, particularly in discussions about language policy and planning and minority language maintenance. Attributed to Haugen (1972), the metaphor emphasises the context in which languages are used, providing a holistic view of language and communication practices in a particular environment. Some authors link language diversity explicitly to environmental protection, noting that biodiversity coincides with language diversity (Krauss, 1992; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Skutnab-Kangas, Maffi, and Harmon, 2003). The ecology metaphor seems to be linked mainly to the conservation of minoritized languages. In this article the argument is put forward that we need to recognise the limits of this metaphor where newly emerging languages are concerned. The implicit metaphor in the term ‘language ecology’ depends on an understanding of the natural world, so it can be argued that just as new species and new habitats are being discovered in the natural world, new languages should be acknowledged as part of the language landscape. Using the example of Sepitori and other urban varieties in South Africa, the article supports the recognition of newly emerging languages because it has important implications for education and for the potential of translanguaging classroom practices.

Language choice in peer interactions and the role of peers in minority language maintenance

Abstract Drawing on the positioning theory and the conditions for language use, this article examines Vietnamese ethnic minority students’ language choice in interactions with their same-ethnicity and majority peers, focusing particularly on their communication motives underlying this choice. Findings suggest that in regulating their language alternation practices across peer groups in different contexts, the students shifted their participation status – from aligning (being alike) to disaligning (being distinct) – to (re)position themselves in relation to their peers. As their desires for alignment or disalignment were either supported or disrupted by their peers, peer attitudes played a critical role in providing opportunities and encouraging minority students’ willingness to use their L1 in school and ethnic community spaces. Implications are suggested for engaging peer support as a resource for maintaining or widening L1 use among young minority people in both of the domains.

Bilingualism in the family and child well-being: A scoping review

Aims and objectives: The aim of this scoping review is to investigate the association between bilingualism in the family and child subjective well-being, by reviewing the literature to identify key themes to date and remaining questions for future research. Methodology: Scopus, Web of Knowledge, ERIC, Psych Articles and PsychInfo were searched systematically between September and October 2018, and after title, abstract and full-text screening, 17 of the initial 1433 articles were included in this review. Data and analysis: Each study was coded for the discipline from which it emerged, the language combination studied, the measures of well-being and language proficiency it used, the geographical location of the study and the number of participants. Data on the link between bilingualism and well-being was extracted from each study. Findings and conclusion: Two main themes were identified: ‘The effect of language proficiency on family relationships’ and ‘The acculturation of parents and children as mediated by language’. Across studies, there was significant heterogeneity in definition of concepts and a diverse range of measures employed. In addition, the studies identified suggest a positive link between minority language maintenance and child well-being, and a positive influence of bilingualism, rather than knowledge of only the home or the majority language. However, the directionality of these relationships will need to be investigated in future research. Originality: This is the first scoping review conducted systematically to explore the link between bilingualism in the family and child well-being internationally. It builds on previous work such as a narrative review which examined this association in the European context.

Immigrant minority language maintenance in Europe: focusing on language education policy and teacher-training

ABSTRACT The present position paper claims that language education policy in Europe regarding immigrant minority languages is far from reaching satisfactory results. Despite a tradition of language diversity and foreign language teaching, there are no general distinct policies on fostering and maintaining those languages that cannot be subsumed under the label foreign or minority languages. We want to call to attention how important it is to adapt present teacher-training for linguistically diverse classrooms. Taking Germany by way of example, we disclose how the past and actual situation excludes immigrant minority languages and thus complicates their maintenance: In fact, there is a lack of clear statements toward multilingualism in both language policy and education acts. Based on the fact that there is no legal frame which regulates the support of all languages in European language policy, we suggest that the following recommendations should be surveyed in detail in future: (1) teachers must be adequately prepared for multilingualism in school, (2) various outcomes of immigrant minority language transmission must be taken into account, and (3) mother-tongue instruction needs to be revised.