Keywords
Abstract
Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of Chinese language among 90 Chinese families in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia and uncovers ordered heritage language loss from 1st generation monolingualism to 2nd generation receptive bilingualism to 3rd generation majority language use. On the one hand, educational policy emerges as the central structural force behind language shift, and economic pragmatism and unfolding cosmopolitan identities serve as the ideological justification for the preference for dominant languages. The article presents new notions of "ethnic authenticity anxiety" of third-generation speakers and burden of "linguistic labor" on second-generation parents, being mediators of intergenerational communication. Results indicate that multilingualism in practice, rather than strict language separation is a more realistic and promising strategy and it has implications for community-based efforts to sustain heritage language learning in rapidly modernizing Southeast Asian societies.
References
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