{"title":"Journey towards an unreachable destiny: parental struggles in the intergenerational transmission of Chinese as a heritage language in Australia","authors":"Lan Wang, M. Hamid","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0066","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article investigates Chinese-Australian parents’ ideologies and visions about the maintenance of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) as well as their struggles in using family language policy (FLP) as defence and coping mechanisms to address tensions associated with the transgenerational transmission of CHL. Language policy defined as an assemblage of ideologies, practices and management and parental agency understood as parents’ capacity to pursue their visions are deployed within Curdt-Christiansen’s dynamic model of FLP that accommodates a complex interplay of internal and external factors. The study focuses on 15 parents who were committed to and made agentive efforts to maintain CHL and transmit it to their next generations. Using interviews, parents’ visions based on their children’s future CHL proficiency and their agentive efforts around CHL transmission were examined. The findings revealed sharp contrasts between parents’ future visions and their lived experiences of struggles at present. Anticipating the eventual loss of CHL among their future generations in the Australian context, the parents struggled to negotiate FLP to combat the foreseeable language shift and defend their visions. The findings have implications for individuals, families, communities, institutions, and policies concerning the maintenance of heritage languages in Australia and globally.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"207 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0066","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Abstract This article investigates Chinese-Australian parents’ ideologies and visions about the maintenance of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) as well as their struggles in using family language policy (FLP) as defence and coping mechanisms to address tensions associated with the transgenerational transmission of CHL. Language policy defined as an assemblage of ideologies, practices and management and parental agency understood as parents’ capacity to pursue their visions are deployed within Curdt-Christiansen’s dynamic model of FLP that accommodates a complex interplay of internal and external factors. The study focuses on 15 parents who were committed to and made agentive efforts to maintain CHL and transmit it to their next generations. Using interviews, parents’ visions based on their children’s future CHL proficiency and their agentive efforts around CHL transmission were examined. The findings revealed sharp contrasts between parents’ future visions and their lived experiences of struggles at present. Anticipating the eventual loss of CHL among their future generations in the Australian context, the parents struggled to negotiate FLP to combat the foreseeable language shift and defend their visions. The findings have implications for individuals, families, communities, institutions, and policies concerning the maintenance of heritage languages in Australia and globally.
期刊介绍:
The International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) is dedicated to the development of the sociology of language as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches – theoretical and empirical – supplement and complement each other, contributing thereby to the growth of language-related knowledge, applications, values and sensitivities. Five of the journal''s annual issues are topically focused, all of the articles in such issues being commissioned in advance, after acceptance of proposals. One annual issue is reserved for single articles on the sociology of language. Selected issues throughout the year also feature a contribution on small languages and small language communities.