Maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany: A longitudinal approach

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Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies Language Development and Disorders Multilingual Education and Policy

Abstract

The study discusses the perspectives of long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany. Based on data from a longitudinal study (2014-2018) we investigated changes in the sociolinguistic situation of 19 adolescent heritage speakers and in their proficiency in Russian. The aim was to investigate whether changes in the participants sociolinguistic situation are reflected in their knowledge of Russian. Data on the sociolinguistic situation were collected via an extensive questionnaire that the participants had to fill out once a year. Language proficiency was measured by experimental tasks targeting different linguistic domains. For the current paper, we used data from the longitudinal measurement of lexical and grammatical proficiency. The results revealed that the participants exposure to Russian input is decreasing in several domains over time, especially concerning media consumption and personal visits to the homeland. Russian is increasingly restricted to interactions with parents, and to educational settings (classes in Russian as a foreign or heritage language). Regarding language attitudes, our participants explicitly consider Russian important primarily for family interactions and cultural factors, but less with regard to career goals. Nevertheless, there was a positive trend in lexical and grammatical proficiency. We interpret these findings as a result of the prolonged exposure to heritage language instruction which leads to a stabilized proficiency in Russian. Given the institutional support and the size of the community, we hypothesize that the perspectives for long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany are better than for Russian heritage speaker communities in other countries.

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References

2013Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics 2011The Results of the National Heritage Language Survey: Implications for Teaching, Curriculum Design, and Professional Development 2013Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages 2010Quantitative analyses in a multivariate study of language attrition: the impact of extralinguistic factors 2011The impact of internal and external factors on linguistic performance in the home language and in L2 among Russian-Hebrew and Russian-German preschool children 2005In Support of a Proficiency-based Definition of Heritage Language Learners: The Case of Russian 2010Family Language Policy: A Case Study of a Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Family: Toward a Theoretical Framework 2001Russlanddeutsche Sprachbiografien. Untersuchungen zur sprachlichen Integration von Aussiedlerfamilien

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2024The effect of language attitudes on proficiency in two heritage languages of Mountain Jews in Israel and the US 2024Influence of Family Language Policies on Language Proficiency across Generations: A Study of Russian-Speaking Families in Germany

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