958
Views
20
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Language maintenance in trilingual families – a focus on grandparents

Pages 423-436 | Received 18 Jul 2012, Accepted 18 Jul 2012, Published online: 13 Aug 2012
 

Abstract

Trilingual families need language support if they wish to maintain three languages. Most studies on trilingualism have paid little attention to the influence of grandparents as an affective factor. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the impact of the extended family, particularly grandparents, on trilingual families' language maintenance. The content of this study has been informed by an analysis of 70 interviews of trilingual families with children residing in England and Germany. Grounded Theory (GT) was used for the data analysis. It was found that most parents whose native language (NL) repertoire included the community language (CL) ‘dropped’ at least one of their home languages (HLs). This was partly related to the grandparents, who often lived in the same community. They tended to speak the highly regarded CL with their young grandchildren, rather than a minority language. In contrast, parents who did not speak the CL natively often used their HLs with their children in order to provide a means of communication between the children and their grandparents. Usually, they resided in a different country and did not speak the language of the community where their grandchildren lived.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 310.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.