Language maintenance and shift under pressure: Three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands
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Yeşim Sevinç
Abstract
Drawing on questionnaire and interview data, this study explores the process of language maintenance and shift across three generations of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. It compares three generations of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals by examining age and place of language learning, self-rated language proficiency, and language choices in six domains (home, school, work, friends, media and leisure time activities, and cognitive activities). Furthermore, it investigates bilinguals’ experiences, motivations for learning languages and attitudes towards bilingualism. Findings suggest that following the typical pattern of language shift described by Mario Saltarelli and Susan Gonzo in 1977, language history, self-rated language proficiency and current language practices of third-generation children differ from those of first- and second-generation bilinguals. Consequently, possible language shift among third-generation bilinguals causes socioemotional pressure about maintaining the Turkish language, triggering intergenerational tensions in Turkish immigrant families. At the same time, the perceived need to shift to Dutch for social and economic reasons causes immigrant children to experience tensions and ambiguities in the linguistic connections between the family and other social domains (e. g. school, friendship). The findings evidence that the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands may no longer be as linguistically homogeneous as once observed. The dissolution of homogeneity can be a sign of social change in which maintaining the Turkish language has become a challenge, whereas speaking Dutch is a necessity of life in the Netherlands.
Funding statement: This study was financially supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Ad Backus, Marianne Gullberg, Anne Golden, her colleagues at MultiLing, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier version of this article.
Appendix A
Questionnaire
Appendix B
Interview Questions
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Supplemental Material
The online version of this article (DOI:10.1515/ijsl-2016-0034) offers supplementary material, available to authorized users.
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Beware of the weeds
- Standardization and the myth of neutrality in language history
- Bildts as a mixed language
- Language maintenance and shift under pressure: Three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands
- Ethnic minority linguistic ambivalence and the problem of methodological assessment of language shift among the Ogu in Ogun State, Nigeria
- Modeling social factors in language shift
- Global repertoires and urban fluidity: youth languages in Africa
- Linguistic landscaping in Tabriz, Iran: a discursive transformation of a bilingual space into a monolingual place
- The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia’s language politics
- Multilingualism and social cohesion: insights from South African students (1998, 2010, 2015)
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2016
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Beware of the weeds
- Standardization and the myth of neutrality in language history
- Bildts as a mixed language
- Language maintenance and shift under pressure: Three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands
- Ethnic minority linguistic ambivalence and the problem of methodological assessment of language shift among the Ogu in Ogun State, Nigeria
- Modeling social factors in language shift
- Global repertoires and urban fluidity: youth languages in Africa
- Linguistic landscaping in Tabriz, Iran: a discursive transformation of a bilingual space into a monolingual place
- The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia’s language politics
- Multilingualism and social cohesion: insights from South African students (1998, 2010, 2015)
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2016
