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

Abstract

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 ..