Attrition & Maintenance of Home Languages in the Indian Diaspora in the United States

Download or read book Attrition & Maintenance of Home Languages in the Indian Diaspora in the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous research in the field of diasporic language attrition and maintenance have suggested that home languages are replaced by host-land languages. They have also shown that home languages survive with phrases and vocabulary related to mainly food, kinship terms, and religious and social rituals and ceremonies. However, most of these studies focused on what has changed linguistically in home languages rather why changes occurred first place. In this study I examines the attrition and maintenance of home languages among Indian diaspora in the United States. Through this study, I explore the attitudes of Indian diaspora II and III generation children and their parents towards their home languages, and investigate the underlying factors and forces which led to their language preferences. In particular, this study addressed the questions of what type of multilingualism exists among Indian diaspora; how language preference lead to home language attrition and maintenance; and, how language preference provides a diasporic person a new linguistic and social identity. In order to investigate of areas of research, I interviewed 12 second and third generation Indian diaspora children, six male and six female, and their parents. These children were all over 18 years old and studying at a U.S. university. The children were also asked to participate in survey. Besides surveys and interviews, participant observation at the family get-togethers of the participants, was conducted by the researcher to further explore the area of research. This way, three methods of data collection were used and data were cross-examined by using data-triangulation. There were three main findings: (1) Multilingualism exists in Indian diaspora, and many different languages are spoken at home, however, the transfer of home languages to the next generation depends upon many factors, (2) the heavy use of English causes the attrition of home languages, and (3) the Indian diaspora is aware of the fact that home languages are very important for maintaining Indian culture and identity, however, we do not see enough efforts and motivation of parents and their children to speak and practice home languages.