Language Ecology in Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia: Bilingual Russian-Speaking Families in Multicultural Settings

Abstract

We investigated language transmission in Russian-speaking families in multilingual settings in Cyprus, Estonia and Sweden. What they have in common is their Russian-language background and the minority status of their native language. In Cyprus and Sweden, participants mainly come from immigrant and mixedmarriage communities, while in Estonia they live in a bilingual society, where Estonian is a prestigious language and Russian has low status. To investigate the complex contexts of the informants' language choices, the language ecology theory was chosen as a theoretical framework. Particular attention was paid to similarities and differences in the three country groups under investigation. Written questionnaires and oral sociolinguistic interviews were used for data collection among Russian-speaking informants in the three countries. We asked whether Russian as the first language was transmitted to the second generation and why. The attitudes towards bilingualism and Russian language transmission (including the change of these attitudes over time)-depending on the parents' success in bringing up children bilingually-seemed to matter. Parental language choice is one of the main factors contributing to successful transmission. A lot depends on whether there was a desire for integration with the dominant language community, for staying isolated and only preserving the home language, or for having a balanced bilingual/multilingual approach and positive attitude towards both majority and minority languages. The socioeconomic status, level of education and mother's employment status played crucial roles in language transmission and attitudes. The linguistic repertoire of the father (minority, majority, or mixed) also had an effect.

Translanguaging in the Family Context: Evidence from Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia

“…Earlier we studied the self-reported assessment of the process of Russian and majority language choice at and outside the home (Karpava, Ringblom and Zabrodskaja, 2018). Our main goal here is to document TL strategy in three different linguistic environments and present everyday communication practices in these different contexts: Cyprus, Sweden and Estonia.…”

Maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany: A longitudinal approach

“…in Russian heritage speakers Due to the fact that populations of Russian heritage speakers can be found in many countries all over the world, there have been quite a lot of attempts to identify (socio)linguistic factors which influence the maintenance and transmission of Russian to the following generation(s) (cf., among others, Armon-Lotem et al 2011, Gagarina & Klassert 2018, Eriksson 2015, Karpava et al 2018, Otwinowska et al 2021, Rodina et al 2020, Zemskaja 2001. Building on general models of assessing language vitality in immigrant settings (Lo Bianco 2008, Lo Bianco & Peyton 2013, Laleko (2013) mentions three groups of factors which prove to be the most influential parameters of language maintenance and shift in the Russianspeaking community in the U.S.:…”

The Effect of the Family Type and Home Literacy Environment on the Development of Literacy Skills by Bi-/Multilingual Children in Cyprus

“…They come from Russia and other republics of the former USSR, and vary in terms of their socio-economic status, reasons for coming and staying in Cyprus, and family composition. Mixed-marriage families, with one partner being Russian and the other Greek Cypriot, are multilingual, having Greek, English and Russian in their dominant language constellations, while Russian immigrant families, with both spouses of Russian origin, are mainly bilingual, using Russian and English in their daily lives (Karpava 2015;Karpava et al 2018;Karpava 2020). English is a global language and is widely used all over Cyprus for communication, education and business purposes (Buschfeld 2013).…”

“…The research tools (see Appendix A) were designed by the researcher based on the previous research (Karpava et al 2018(Karpava et al , 2019Leseman and Jong 1998;Otwinowska and Karpava 2015). Both pen-and-paper and online questionnaires (Brown 2001;Gillham 2007;Iwaniec 2020;Rolland et al 2020) were used, as they are versatile and efficient in terms of researcher time, researcher effort and financial resources (Dörnyei and Taguchi 2010) and are less intrusive for the participants (who can take as much time as they need and at the best time for them to complete the questionnaire in an anonymous way); they help objectively measure a great variety of abstract constructs and collect background data, and allowed us to collect a large amount of information (Iwaniec 2020).…”