Based on the data of two large scale national research projects funded to investigate the linguistic behaviour and identity in Lithuanian diaspora the paper will deal with the issues of family language policy and dialect maintenance. The paper analyses the data of qualitative in-depth interviews.
Based on the data of two large scale national research projects funded to investigate the linguistic behaviour and identity in Lithuanian diaspora the paper will deal with the issues of family language policy and dialect maintenance in Lithuanian diaspora. During both projects, online surveys (in total 2610 respondents) and in-depth interviews (in total 366) have been conducted in order to investigate the language behaviour, the maintenance of the heritage language and the links to the Lithuanian identity of the Lithuanian communities abroad.
Lithuanian diaspora in various countries of the world is constituted of people from different emigration waves: 1) those emigrated in the end of 19th century and after the WWI (mainly economical emigrants), 2) after the WWII (mainly political emigrants), 3) after 1990, when Lithuania detached from the Soviet Union and re-established its Independence (mainly economical emigrants). Many differences in the linguistic behaviour of the different emigration waves and different generations of emigrant communities in the world are observed. In some families not only the standard Lithuanian language but also dialect is maintained.
The paper analyses the data of qualitative in-depth interviews with Lithuanian emigrants of different generations and emigration waves living in Europe and other continents (North and South Americas, Australia). The in-depth interviews with informants have been conducted face-to-face or via skype. The paper will focus on the use of dialect in the family and other contexts, and the language attitudes. Spolsky's language policy model, where language policy is seen as constituted of three interrelated but independently describable components – practice, beliefs, and management – is taken as the base for the analysis. The results stress the significance of individual language experience of emigrants in the maintenance of dialect and point to the complexity of family language policy and the language ideologies in Lithuania at the time of emigration.
