Language maintenance in trilingual families – a focus on grandparents

TLDR

Trilingual families require language support to maintain three languages, yet prior research has largely overlooked the influence of grandparents as an affective factor. This paper investigates how grandparents affect language maintenance in trilingual families. The study analyzed 70 interviews of trilingual families with children in England and Germany using Grounded Theory. Parents whose native language included the community language tended to drop at least one home language because grandparents spoke the community language with grandchildren, whereas parents lacking native community language used home languages to communicate with grandparents.

Abstract

Abstract Trilingual families need language support if they wish to maintain three languages. Most studies on trilingualism have paid little attention to the influence of grandparents as an affective factor. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the impact of the extended family, particularly grandparents, on trilingual families' language maintenance. The content of this study has been informed by an analysis of 70 interviews of trilingual families with children residing in England and Germany. Grounded Theory (GT) was used for the data analysis. It was found that most parents whose native language (NL) repertoire included the community language (CL) 'dropped' at least one of their home languages (HLs). This was partly related to the grandparents, who often lived in the same community. They tended to speak the highly regarded CL with their young grandchildren, rather than a minority language. In contrast, parents who did not speak the CL natively often used their HLs with their children in order to provide a means of communication between the children and their grandparents. Usually, they resided in a different country and did not speak the language of the community where their grandchildren lived.