LINGUIST List 17.1720
Tue Jun 06 2006
Diss: Socioling: Kopeliovich: 'Reversing Language Shift in the Immi...'
Editor for this issue: Meredith Valant
<meredithlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Shulamit
Kopeliovich,
Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family: a case-study of a Russian-speaking community in Israel
Message 1: Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family: a case-study of a Russian-speaking community in Israel
Date: 30-May-2006
From: Shulamit Kopeliovich <kopeliovichgmail.com>
Subject: Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family: a case-study of a Russian-speaking community in Israel
Institution: Bar-Ilan University
Program: Language and Policy Center
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Shulamit Kopeliovich
Dissertation Title: Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family: a case-study of a Russian-speaking community in Israel
Linguistic Field(s):
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): Hebrew (heb)
Russian (rus)
Dissertation Director:
Muhammad Hasan Amara
Bernard Spolsky
Dissertation Abstract:
The cross-disciplinary thesis focuses on the non-linear dynamic interactionof social and linguistic factors influencing the process ofintergenerational transmission of a heritage language in the immigrantfamily. The theoretical framework incorporates Reversing Language Shifttheory (Fishman, 1991, 2001) adjusted to the family level with the help ofthe following social theories: Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998),Peer-Group Socialization (Harris, 1995) and Family Invisible Work (Okita,2002). Structural aspects of Reversing Language Shift in the family areanalyzed within Contact Linguistic theory (Myers-Scotton, 2002).
The dissertation presents an ethnographic longitudinal study of a singleRussian-speaking community (27 big families, 72 children) and in-depthtape-recorded interviews with parents and their seven children in aselected family.
Chapter 3 discusses social aspects of intergenerational languagetransmission and elaborates Community of Practice framework: children's andadults' Communities of Practice dynamically merge and split in diversedomains of their practices. Linguistic reflexes of this process can betraced at diverse structural levels and in codeswitching patterns in thespeech of adults and children. Whereas traditional Reversing Language Shiftresearch perceives two distinct languages vying for status, thedissertation argues for the existing of four distinctly identifiablecontact varieties combining Russian and Hebrew abstract and surfaceelements in diverse ways and in different proportions.
Chapter 4 presents a qualitative linguistic analysis of theHebrew-influenced variety of Russian spoken by second-generation speakersbased on the Contact Linguistic framework by Myers-Scotton (2002). Thestudy proposes a typology of contact-induced changes commonly observed intheir speech and investigation of the basic linguistic mechanismsunderlying these changes.
Chapter 5 reports on the results of the interviews in Russian and Hebrew(2-3 hours) with seven siblings in the K. family:1) detailed analysis of their language attitudes and identification2) individual linguistic profiles recording distribution of Hebrew-inducedchanges in 1000-word excerpts from their interviews in Russian.It describes the immigrant children's dramatic dialogue with their familycultural and linguistic heritage, diachronic changes in attitudes rangingfrom total rejection of Russian to enthusiastic linguistic rebirth, andparticularly vivid bilingual practices. The study reveals the majordifferences between the siblings showing in rare detail the effects of age,age at immigration, personality, external experience, peer pressure andother factors on attitudes to Russian and Hebrew and on the linguisticproperties of their speech in Russian.
Chapter 6 analyses family language management in the K. family. Theparents' perspective on this process gives insight into the time-consumingand emotionally demanding task of heritage language maintenance. Thedifferent strategies adopted by each parent and the different resultsachieved suggest important lessons for immigrant parents.
Chapter 7 finally ties up the various studies into a single analysis of theconstructive interaction among various social, psychological, demographicand linguistic factors, thus avoiding the trap of claiming crude causality.Instead, a model of a continuum of proficiency levels in second-generationspeakers of Russian as a heritage language is proposed.
Chapter 8 discusses multi-fold relations between language policies at thefamily level and at the national one.
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