Family language policy of Serbian as a heritage language in the USA diaspora context: reversing language shift

Abstract

This study investigates the language contact situation within the Serbian diasporic community in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, USA, through the lens of family language policy (FLP). Based on qualitative research, carried out through in-depth interviews, it indicates that notions traditionally used to account for prolonged contact situations, such as language shift and maintenance, cannot fully account for the twenty-first century diasporic communicative and cultural practices and identity construction unless FLP in different points in time and space in the diasporic experience has not been given proper consideration. Investigating diaspora communicative practices and sociolinguistic and cultural ideologies within family realms requires a complex non-linear and non-essentialist perspective which considers a range of multiple individual and collective experiences that create a range of patterns, behaviors, and communications. Our findings demonstrate a reversed language shift driven by changes in speakers' language and cultural ideologies, along with a growing sense of agency manifested through different forms of language leadership within FLP.

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