Einar Haugen Memorial Lecture at the University of Oslo
Li Wei presents at the Einar Haugen Memorial Lecture at the University of Oslo
Einar Haugen Memorial Lecture at the University of Oslo
Li Wei delivered this year’s Einar Haugen Memorial Lecture at the University of Oslo on Thursday 26 September 2013, on Cultural Encounters in transnational multilingual families . For many transnational families, bilingualism and multilingualism mean different things to different generations: For the first generation migrant adults (parents), learning new languages for the new resident country is the most important task, while their local-born children face the challenge of maintaining the home/heritage language. Additive Bilingualism is not universal. Grandparents often have reduced opportunities to interact with others speaking the same languages, without gaining any new languages. Transnational families have to face these different challenges together: the presence of monolingual grandparents is as much an issue as children not wanting or being able to speak the home language in the everyday family life. Moreover, transnational families also face the challenges of fighting against prejudices and stereotypes and constructing new identities.
Li Wei’s lecture discusses some of these challenges through a sociolinguistic ethnography of three transnational families, all from China, now living in Britain. One is of Korean ethnic background from China and has decided that their children should concentrate on using Korean and English, in effect cutting off their ties with China. One is of 2nd and 3rd generations of Chinese immigrants whose grandparents were Cantonese and Hakka speakers, now feeling the pressure to learn Mandarin, due to social changes in the British Chinese community. And one whose grandparents are highly educated professionals, speaking very good English, but not having sufficient social networks to support their everyday interaction. We examine how the three families cope with issues such as family language policy, children’s language socialization, linguistic ideologies, symbolic competence and changing linguistic hierarchies, and struggles in maintaining contacts with both the former and new “home” countries. Implications for social policy and professional practice, as well as bilingualism and multilingualism research generally, will also be discussed. The lecture is part of a series in memory of Einar Haugen (1906-1994), the late Victor S. Thomas Professor of Scandinavian and Linguistics at Harvard University and President of the Linguistic Society of America, a pioneer and father figure in the field of language contact and multilingualism. The lecture is hosted by the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing), a Centre of Excellence funded by the Research Council of Norway.