A comparison of heritage language ideologies in interaction

Abstract

In Canada, the notion of a heritage language ideology is often conceived of as a natural by‐product of official multiculturalism. By contrast, Germany has long struggled with its status as a multilingual and multicultural country. By comparing two corpora of interviews with immigrants to each of these two countries (Canadians of German heritage and Germans of Vietnamese heritage), this paper aims to explore to what extent these different language ideologies are reconstructed in the interviews. It will be argued that the interviewees construct different sociolinguistic spaces and take up different positions within them in terms of centre and periphery. Our analysis shows that the German‐Canadian interviewees construct public sociolinguistic spaces in which they position themselves as German even when they do not have an active knowledge of their heritage language. By contrast, despite the monolingual habitus in Germany, the German‐Vietnamese respondents endorse a heritage language ideology; the space they claim for speaking Vietnamese, however, is restricted to private or family conversations.

Managing Differences, Showing (Dis)affiliations: Language Contacts Through the Eyes of the Inhabitants of a Village in Finnish Lapland

“…In detecting the links between attitudes and ideologies, interactional analysis is helpful (König et al, 2015; see also Spotti & Blommaert, 2016). Through analysing attitudes in interaction (Liebscher & Dailey-O'Cain, 2017), I discuss one's relationship with languages, and as this deals with evaluation, positions, and alignment, the concept of stance is particularly useful (ibid.…”

Contextualizing language attitudes: An interactional perspective

“…Other researchers within this tradition also link language attitudes more specifically to the analysis of emotions, for example, by drawing attention to the ways in which language attitudes are formulated by making use of emotion verbs (Tophinke & Ziegler, :10). This type of interactional analysis can also be used to discuss language attitudes in their links to broader stereotypes (Riehl, ) and to the construction of knowledge and authority (Liebscher & Dailey‐O'Cain, ), ideologies (König, Dailey‐O'Cain, & Liebscher, ), and topoi, that is, discourse themes (Arndt, ) and as these affect and are affected by the expression of language attitudes. Finally, research pursued through this interactional approach has also provided us with a better understanding of the kinds of linguistic resources that are commonly used to express language attitudes (König, ), including metaphors (Cuonz, ).…”

A Comparison of extended noun phrase in German and Vietnamese language

“…Language users tends to construct different sociolinguistic spaces and take up different positions within them in terms of centre and periphery (Konig, Dailey-O'Cain, Liebscher, 2015). In this article, the author intends to compare the extended noun phrases in German and Vietnamese language to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages, contribute to illuminate a grammatical phenomenon and help learners of German language have more knowledge to learn the language more effectively.…”