4. Fostering Heritage Languages and Diasporic Identities: The Role of Grassroots Initiatives in Alberta and British Columbia

‘Glued to the family’: the role of familism in heritage language development strategies

“…Part of filling this void includes the search for 'surrogate extended family members', or what Guardado referred to as a kind of diasporic familism, in which these surrogate family members 'become important sources of input and support for the home language and culture and one of the aims of families' language socialization efforts' (Guardado, 2008a, p. 244). While recent work has found affective ties to exist among members of ethnolinguistic communities (Kim, 2011), to our knowledge, this finding has not been directly related to familism (for an exception, see Guardado & Becker, 2013). As part of his influential work on reversing language shift, Fishman (2004) stressed:…”

“…As was the case for several of the other families in the group, Mrs Ruedas reported feeling a sense of attachment and belonging to the many families who had become close friends, to the point of seeing the group members as her own family. As such, she relied on them for support in different everyday situations, often related to child-rearing and care (Guardado & Becker, 2013).…”

“…Thus, as much as parents might like to blame themselves for, or credit themselves with, their children's proficiency in their HL, the past few decades of sociolinguistic research point to the fact that children's linguistic and cultural participation in a larger community can be as significant as the role of the family (Tse, 2001;Zentella, 1997) and that parental interactions alone are insufficient for HLD (Kravin, 1992). Being that children are socialised both through language and into language use within a community, we may claim that minority language maintenance success hinges on both domestic and extra-domestic community participation working in conjunction -including geographically distant communities (Decapua & Wintergerst, 2009;Guardado & Becker, 2013;Szecsi & Szilagyi, 2012). Nevertheless, far fewer studies have examined the language socialisation activities in which communities and community groups engage (for exceptions, see Blackledge & Creese, 2010;Guardado, 2008a).…”