Language transmission revisited: family type, linguistic environment and language attitudes

This article revisits factors in intergenerational language maintenance and shift within the family. It does so through an in-depth analysis of what 14 migrants to Australia from German-speaking Switzerland reported in written life stories and subsequent life story interviews. The participants represent four family types and a wide age range, and they migrated over several decades. Whether they transmitted Swiss German to the children and if so, to what extent, cannot be unequivocally correlated with either the family type or the time of migration. However, participants who migrated and raised their children during a more assimilationist period in Australia tended to transmit their language to a limited degree only or not at all. The analysis of the personal narratives also considers the specific language variety in question (Swiss German) as well as the role of the parents' attitudes and their beliefs about language, bilingualism and language learning. The paper argues that a life story approach is a valuable complement and extension of macro-level research into language transmission, highlighting the diverse experiences and the complexity of the variables involved.