Language Maintenance and Language Shift Among Chinese Immigrant Parents and Their Second-Generation Children in the U.S.

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donghui Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
Chinese Immigrant ◽  
Second Generation Children ◽  
Chinese Immigrant Parents ◽  
The U.S

Rupturing the Silences: Intergenerational Construction of Salvadoran Immigrant War Necronarratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Ester N. Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The State ◽  
Central American ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
War Memories ◽  
Salvadoran Civil War ◽  
War Stories ◽  
The U.S

Abstract As the children of wartime immigrants from El Salvador become adults, they must grapple with the role violence played—and continues to play—in Salvadoran society. Second-generation Salvadorans interpret their relatives’ stories of war, death, and violence through a lens that prioritizes lessons gained over traumatization. Thus, immigrant parents’ casual discussions about their experiences during the Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) become what this article calls necronarratives: stories pieced together from memories based on foiling death and violence generated through state necropolitics. Youth interpret inherited memories through a lens of survival, resilience, and healing. Necropolitics refers to the ability of the state to legislate and draw policies that determine who lives and who dies. Although scholars have noted that high levels of war-related trauma among Salvadoran immigrants cause them to remain silent about those experiences, my research reveals that children of these immigrants collect and construct narratives using the memory fragments shared during casual conversations with their relatives. Drawing from 20 semi-structured interviews with U.S. Salvadorans, this paper shows that U.S. Salvadorans construct narratives out of their family’s war memories in order to locate affirming qualities of the Salvadoran experience such as surviving a war, achieving migration, and building a life in a new country. Contrary to past indications that Central American migrants live in silence about their national origins in order to avoid discrimination in the U.S. and to avoid traumatizing their children, this study on second-generation Salvadoran adults describes the ethnic roots information families do share through war stories. The Salvadoran case shows youth actively engage with necronarratives as they come of age to adulthood to yield lessons about how their national origins and ethnic heritages shape their senses of belonging and exclusion within U.S. society.

Language maintenance and language shift

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Rubino ◽  
Camilla Bettoni
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
The Impact

Patterns of language use by Sicilians and Venetians living in Sydney are here presented with particular attention to the maintenance of Italian and Dialect under the impact of widespread shift to English. Data gathered by questionnaire self-reporting are analysed according to four main variables: domain, linguistic generation, gender and region of origin. Results suggest that the original Italian diglossia between the High and the Low languages is well maintained, as Italian occupies the more public, formal and regionally heterogeneous space in the community, and Dialect the more private, informal and homogeneous one. Among the subjects’ variables, generation predictably accounts for the greatest variation, as both languages are used most by the first generation and least by the second. However, the original diglossia holds well also among the second generation. With regard to gender and region of origin, it would seem that, compared to men, women maintain both languages slightly better, and that, compared to men and Sicilians respectively, both women and Venetians maintain slightly better the original diglossia. We conclude that the position of Italian, although more limited, seems somewhat more solid than that of Dialect, and suggest some reasons for it.

scholarly journals Chinese immigrant parents’ vaccination decision making for children: a qualitative analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda DL Wang ◽  
Wendy WT Lam ◽  
Joseph T Wu ◽  
Qiuyan Liao ◽  
Richard Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
Chinese Immigrant ◽  
Vaccination Decision ◽  
Chinese Immigrant Parents

Parents Beyond Oceans: A Social Group Work Curriculum for Chinese Immigrant Parents

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-305
Author(s):  
Jia-Lin Liu ◽  
Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng ◽  
Bela Rex-Kiss ◽  
Gretchen Lord ◽  
Julia Francois
Keyword(s):  
Group Work ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
Chinese Immigrant ◽  
Chinese Immigrant Parents ◽  
Social Group Work

scholarly journals Chinese Immigrant Parents’ Involvement in Their Children’s After-school Education: Behaviors and Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
George Zhou ◽  
Lan Zhong ◽  
Jie Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
School Education ◽  
After School ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
Chinese Immigrant ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Parents Involvement ◽  
Canadian Culture ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Chinese Immigrant Parents

Through listening to participants’ own words, this study provides a comprehensive description and analysis of Chinese immigrant parents’ perceptions and behaviours of involvement in their children’s after-school education. It reveals that Chinese immigrant parents were willing to become involved in their children’s after-school education. Although many Chinese immigrant parents faced challenges in the host culture, they sacrificed themselves to support their children’s development. They hold high education expectations for their children, view academics as the most important thing and provide help with their children’s academics. Yet they also want their children to receive a well-rounded education. This study indicates that the Chinese immigrant parents’ behaviours and perspectives of involvement in their children’s after-school education were shaped by Chinese traditional cultural values, parents’ personal experiences, and their understanding of Canadian culture.

Hidden histories and second generation struggles in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant

2020 ◽  
pp. 002198941990052
Author(s):  
Asha Jeffers
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Immigrant Parents ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
The One ◽  
Second Generation Children ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ways Of Being

David Chariandy’s lauded 2007 debut novel Soucouyant explores the way that immigrants transmit lessons, beliefs, and ways of being to their children both intentionally and unintentionally, and the ways that these transmissions can contradict one another. This article argues that while much of the critical writing about Soucouyant has foregrounded the relationship between the unnamed narrator and his dementia-suffering mother, the text is just as concerned with exploring intragenerational relationships as it is with intergenerational ones. Indeed, the text demonstrates the interweaving of both intergenerational and intragenerational relationships in a unique and compelling way. The lessons that get passed on between the generations shape the lives and interactions of second generation subjects between themselves. In particular, the relationship between the narrator and Meera, the mysterious woman who has moved in with and is taking care of his mother when he returns to her home after deserting her for several years, poses the question of how these two second generation subjects of differing class backgrounds might reconcile themselves with both their parents’ Caribbean pasts, their own Canadian presents, and uncertain futures. The novel’s subtitle, “a novel of forgetting,” signals the central role of memory and forgetting play in the novel. The immigrant parents’ desire and attempts to forget the past are not wholly successful and their second generation children are forced to first remember before they can move forward without being haunted by the traumas, silences, and anxieties of their parents. The complex racial and class politics of Trinidad and Canada lead to the narrator and Meera receiving very different legacies from their parents. However, their eventual coming together, in all its difficulty, suggests that there is hope for second generation subjects who wish to choose a different path than the one set for them by either their parents or the nation-state.

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