Mothers' attitudes towards heritage language maintenance: a case study of Ukranian Immigrants

In the global phenomenon of migration, language contact is increasingly ever-present. These multilingual environments lead to some languages at risk of assimilation by dominant linguistic neighbours; this is certainly the case with immigrants’ minority languages. Language maintenance can grow from this pressure, to prevent the practice of heritage languages being lost. Park and Sakar (2007) note that family plays an important role, and Fishman (1991) notes how intergenerational transmission is the crucial for minority children’s heritage language maintenance. Therefore, an interesting avenue to explore is the attitudes towards heritage language maintenance, more specifically the parental attitudes towards it. With this in mind, much research has explored parental attitudes in immigrant communities with varying results. However, there are many communities yet to be researched. This study explores the Ukrainian community residing in Bradford, England. Ukrainian diaspora across Britain is a result of post-war Displaced Person camps. European Volunteer Workers were distributed to manufacturing areas with labour shortages, such as textile factories. This is how there came to be a large community of now first, second, third and fourth-generation Ukrainian immigrants living in Bradford. I will enter this community to investigate parental attitudes towards heritage language maintenance, why they hold these attitudes and their efforts towards maintenance. In a case-study type approach, interviews with 10-12 mothers will be conducted. Using thematic analysis, I will identify trends in the qualitative data to why they hold their views. The study may also go onto explore efforts the mothers make in order to aid intergenerational transmission.