Linguistic practices and language attitudes of second-generation Italo-Australians

This chapter presents a discussion on the role of English in the linguistic repertoires of the second generation of onward-migrating families from Italy to the UK. Participants reported on their language use, language maintenance, and language attitudes, both in their early life in Italy and in the UK. The second generation maintain Italian with same-age peer friendships and older siblings. They view the language as linguistic capital to enhance their future career prospects in the UK or support a return to Italy. Italian is also maintained in conversations with parents often in the form of code-switching. Parents struggle with English after a long period of residence in Italy and children are not fluent in the heritage languages. English is considered the most important language and, together with a British education to improve their children’s life chances, is the main pull factor for families in the decision to migrate onward. Onward migration allows these families to restart language shift towards English (which was interrupted during the years of stay in Italy) in a parallel way to language shift towards English taking place in their countries of origin.

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Anglo-Australians’ and Immigrants’ Attitudes toward Language and Accent: A Review of Experimental and Survey Research

International Migration Review ◽

10.1177/019791838702100103 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 48-69 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Victor J. Callan ◽

Cynthia Gallois

Keyword(s):

Second Generation ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Policy Research ◽

Educational Programs ◽

National Language ◽

Special Importance ◽

Opportunities To Learn ◽

Negative Attitudes ◽

Speech Communities ◽

Ethnic Language

Research on the language attitudes of members of dominant and minority speech communities has special importance in countries such as Australia, where governments are in the process of developing a national language policy. Research in Australia suggests that Anglo-Australians remain strongly monolingual and Anglophile in their attitudes; they support educational programs on other languages mainly for their children's own educational advantage. In addition, they show preference in most situations for standard or prestige varieties of English. Second generation members of immigrant groups are under strong pressure to assimilate and to abandon their community languages. Opportunities to learn and use community language are somewhat restricted. In addition, young, second generation Australians may in some cases have even more negative attitudes toward nonstandard accents in English then do Anglo-Australians although they may value their own ethnic language as a signal of solidarity with their ethnic community.

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Attitudes towards Turkish and Turks in Austria: From Guestworkers to “Quasi-Foreigners” in a Changing Social Landscape

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages6010058 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 58

Author(s):

Johannes Woschitz

Keyword(s):

Second Generation ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Age Effect ◽

Turkish Immigrants ◽

Social Landscape ◽

Changing Attitudes

In Austria, Turkish immigrants have long suffered from the stigma of being the uneducated and unintegrated guestworker, often portrayed as marginalised and as living in parallel societies. However, second-generation Turks who were born and/or raised in Austria have challenged this stigma profoundly. This paper argues that this has led to a re-indexicalisation of Turkish in Austria. Evidence for this is drawn from two matched-guise studies (n = 226) that aimed to unearth the covert language attitudes of Austrian participants towards Turkish. The data presented shows that many Austrian participants still conceive of the Turkish guises in overall xenophobic terms. They were depicted as more aggressive, less educated, less integrated, more joyous of life and more family-oriented when compared to the German guises. There was, however, an age-effect indicative of changing attitudes among participants born after 1998, for whom this stereotype seems to be losing its influence.

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“Arabic is the mother tongue of Islam”: Religion and the reproduction of Arabic among second-generation British-Arab immigrants in Cardiff, UK

Multilingua ◽

10.1515/multi-2017-0093 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 313-334 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mirona Moraru

Keyword(s):

Second Generation ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Main Argument ◽

Arab Immigrants ◽

The Core ◽

The Family ◽

Symbolic Value ◽

Linguistic Practices ◽

The Uk ◽

The Relationship

Abstract Born and educated in the UK, with Arab parents and Muslims, second-generation British-Arab immigrants in Cardiff find themselves at the core of a complex web of power relations which potentiates their production of multilingual practices. However, while Cardiff is officially bilingual, English being the dominant language and Welsh becoming increasingly valuable, linguistic practices with Arabic are usually rendered illegitimate. In spite of this, British-Arabs produce, reproduce, and negotiate linguistic practices with Arabic in Cardiff. The present article employs Pierre Bourdieu’s model of linguistic production and circulation to analyse the oral linguistic biographies of six second-generation British-Arabs in Cardiff in order to understand the conditions which enable the production of such practices in Cardiff in spite of their illegitimacy. The main argument is that Islam complements the central role occupied by the family in the reproduction of linguistic practices with Arabic in Cardiff; the relationship between the symbolic value ascribed to Qur’anic Arabic, the institutionalised provision of Arabic literacy, and mainstream education functions as a mechanism which reproduces the symbolic value of linguistic practices with Arabic on specific linguistic submarkets in Cardiff.

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Dutch immigrants in New Zealand

Australian Review of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.1075/aral.15.2.01fol ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 1-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Jetske Folmer

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

First Generation ◽

Second Generation ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Language Shift ◽

Language Loss ◽

Linguistic History ◽

History Of

Abstract This article contains a report of a case study on language shift and language loss in three generations of a Dutch immigrant family in New Zealand carried out in 1990/1991 (Folmer 1991). Language shift refers to the shift from Dutch to English and language loss to the loss of the mother tongue Dutch. In addition to language shift and loss, the personal linguistic history of the subjects and their (language) attitudes were examined; these topics are only discussed indirectly in this article. One first generation member, five members of the second generation and two third generation children took part in the investigation. The instruments used were an analysis of letters, an interview, a domain questionnaire, an editing test and a correction test. It was found that language shift increases with each generation. The factors education, exogamy, (language) attitudes and age also proved to be important. Furthermore, the type of domain or activity made a difference. In both the first and the second generation the degree of language loss in Dutch was rather low. Some trends in the loss process were established and certain word classes turned out to be more problematic than others.

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“My Child Is a Perfect Bilingual”: Cognition, Emotions, and Affectivity in Heritage Language Transmission

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages4020044 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 44 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ivanova

Keyword(s):

Intergenerational Transmission ◽

Heritage Language ◽

First Generation ◽

Second Generation ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Central Spain ◽

Proficiency Level ◽

Positive Attitudes ◽

The Town ◽

Key Questions

One of the key questions of studies on heritage language (HL) transmission is which factors most likely foster the intergenerational transmission of HL and more saliently favor its acquisition in second-generation speakers. The present study explores the effect of the cognitive and affective disposition of first-generation speakers on the subjective HL proficiency level in the second generation of Russian-speaking immigrants in the town of Salamanca, central Spain. Based on a scalar questionnaire which enquires into the language practices, language attitudes and language motivations of the first-generation speakers, the study analyzes the effect of self-categorization, attitudes towards HL utility, and strategies of HL intergenerational transmission in ten mixed families. The main results of the study show that positive HL affectivity is key to assuring proficient HL acquisition in second-generation speakers, while negative HL affectivity systematically drives unbalanced Spanish–Russian bilingualism in children. The final results are consistent with those of other recent studies on affectivity in HL and suggest the importance of positive attitudes towards HL in its transmission.

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