Article
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
“It's something that's just faded away”: how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes sense of language shift
Published/Copyright:
August 16, 2006
Abstract
This article is based on a case study of a family with three children who migrated to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland in 1984. It was found that within less than ten years, Swiss-German was substituted by English as the language in the home and today the younger generation use Swiss-German exclusively for communication with their relatives in Switzerland. The article retraces this change in language use and examines how the members of the family recall the language shift and make sense of it. The findings are discussed in terms of the roles played by the family members (in particular by the mother) and in terms of the family's language background.
Published Online: 2006-08-16
Published in Print: 2006-07-01
© Walter de Gruyter
You are currently not able to access this content.
You are currently not able to access this content.
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Introduction
- Australia's community languages
- Intergenerational language transmission in an established Australian migrant community: what makes the difference?
- Parent and child perspectives on Greek language education in Australia
- A language community from a historical perspective: homogeneity and variation
- Linguistic practices and language attitudes of second-generation Italo-Australians
- “It's something that's just faded away”: how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes sense of language shift
- Language maintenance and shift in the Danish community in Melbourne
- Language maintenance in friendships: second-generation German, Greek, and Vietnamese migrants
- Language and Orthodox churches in Australia
- The Southern Saami Language in Svahken Sijte
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Introduction
- Australia's community languages
- Intergenerational language transmission in an established Australian migrant community: what makes the difference?
- Parent and child perspectives on Greek language education in Australia
- A language community from a historical perspective: homogeneity and variation
- Linguistic practices and language attitudes of second-generation Italo-Australians
- “It's something that's just faded away”: how a Melbourne family of Swiss-German background makes sense of language shift
- Language maintenance and shift in the Danish community in Melbourne
- Language maintenance in friendships: second-generation German, Greek, and Vietnamese migrants
- Language and Orthodox churches in Australia
- The Southern Saami Language in Svahken Sijte
