Ethnolinguistic vitality and language use amongst Eastern European migrants in East Anglia

Abstract

This paper discusses language usage patterns amongst Eastern European migrants living in the East Anglia region of Great Britain. It examines the relationship between individual speakers' language use and societal factors, with an emphasis of respondents' perceptions of ethnic, cultural and linguistic vitality. A linguistic vitality and language usage questionnaire adapted from Yagmur, and Yagmur and Akinci, capturing domain-specific language use as well as respondents' perception of their own and other ethnolinguistic groups, was completed by 58 migrants from new European Union member states. Data analysis uncovers three themes: first, language use is domain-specific, with preferences for the L1 in the home/family domain only, and L2 English being the language of choice elsewhere; second, there are low perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality of the L1 group across the sample; and third, there is initial evidence for a potential longitudinal shift in language use as a result of an integrative attitude to migration by the respondents and long-term plans to reside in the UK from the outset.

Keywords:

• ethnolinguistic vitality
• immigrants
• language use
• migration
• language choice
• language vitality

Notes

1. Details on current figures were not available at the time of writing, and the discussion here is based on a meta-analysis of existing and previously published data, as referenced.

2. Interestingly, in follow-up interviews, which are not discussed here, the two Russian respondents repeatedly referred to themselves as ‘European’, despite Russia generally not being considered part of Europe or the EU.

3. For a discussion of real-time and apparent-time models, see, inter alia, Bayley (2004).