Language transmission among multilingual Chinese immigrant families in the Northern Netherlands

Maintaining heritage languages is of vital significance for multicultural families. We present a study of Mandarin transmission among ten Dutch Chinese families in Groningen (Netherlands) associated to a local Saturday school. Data from semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire reveal that personal, integrative, and instrumental values, all play a role in language choices. Remarkably, with general positive attitudes towards multilingualism in Dutch society, families too feel encouraged to maintain Mandarin. Nevertheless, they report lack of school and institutional support, and criticisms about their ability to belong in Dutch society. Parents wish that teachers attached more importance to their heritage languages, rather than solely focusing on children’s learning of Dutch (and English), and that their own multiculturality (not only that of their children) be embraced. Likewise, parents are critical of the Chinese school, and wish teachers better accommodated to the sensitivities and practices their children are used to from their Dutch school experience.

Acquisizione e apprendimento linguistico degli heritage speakers russofoni della scuola N. Gogol’ di Roma: ultimi sviluppi dell’indagine

In the last few decades the study of the so called ‘heritage languages’ has become an emerging field in the research of bilingualism, because migrant people often try to maintain their identities and minority languages. This work resumes a new testing experience, which has been conducted four years after the last one (2013), with some Russian heritage speakers (HS) living in Italy and attending a Russian Saturday school in Rome. It will focus on the difficulties of language acquisition and the possibility for the HS to develop a better language competence through formal learning.

“Speak Turkish!” or not? Language choices, identities and relationship building within New York’s Turkish community

This article draws on an ethnographic case study on a Turkish community-based school in New York, and discusses relationship building within this community. The larger study investigated the following research question: What is the role and function of a Turkish Saturday school in developing and maintaining Turkish language and constructing a Turkish cultural identity in the United States? It employed a conceptual framework combining language shift and maintenance, linguistic identity and ideology. Ethnographic data were analyzed following Gee’s (

Heritage Language Maintenance and Cultural Identity Formation: The Case of a Turkish Saturday School in New York City

This paper investigates the role of a Turkish Saturday school in the United States in helping students maintain the Turkish language and form a sense of Turkish cultural identity. This case study of one Turkish Saturday school in New York City builds on research in language maintenance and shift, and in language ideologies and linguistic identity to explore the school’s administrators’, teachers’, students’ and parents’ beliefs and practices. The data were analyzed using Gee’s Discourse analysis framework, specifically his six building tasks. Findings showed that the Turkish language is the primary means to construct a Turkish cultural identity in the U.S. Five overarching goals of the Turkish school emerged: (1) connection building: the school as a bridge to Turkish heritage, (2) collectivity building: bringing together the Turkish speech community, (3) contentment building: the school as a venue for the adults to feel moral satisfaction, (4) identity building: building a Turkish American identity in the U.S., and (5) diversity indicating: enabling the school clientele to see themselves as one of many other ethnolinguistic groups in the United States.