Latviešu valodas apguve. XIII Starptautiskais baltistu kongress : rakstu krājums最新文献

{"title":"Latviešu mācībvalodas izglītības iestādes izvēle saviem bērniem: kādi ir krievu valodā runājošo ģimeņu iemesli?","authors":"Sanita Martena","doi":"10.37384/lva.2021.178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37384/lva.2021.178","url":null,"abstract":"The paper is based on research on the role of Latvian in families where the parents’ mother tongue is not Latvian, carried out as part of the sub-project 8 “Latvian Language Acquisition” in the framework of the National Research Programme “Latvian Language”. The aim of the article is to explore the main reasons that have stimulated families of the Russian-speaking minority to educate their children at schools with Latvian as the medium of instruction and the impact of this decision on the language environment in these families. The study is based on interviews with three families in which they reveal narratives about their choices of pre-school and school education programmes. The narratives are analysed in the context of theories of family language policy, focussing on the model by Curdt-Christiansen (2018). The main research questions are: what has been the motivation of parents when choosing educational institutions with Latvian as the medium of instruction for their children; what attitudes from other family members and representatives of the educational institutions do these families face; and how have the children’s educational paths in Latvian influenced language practices at home. Family language policy research as a part of sociolinguistics falls within the context of broader research on language policy and planning. In the development of this subfield, attention was initially mostly paid to the languages used in bilingual families, their choices, language practices, and linguistic attitudes. Recently, however, the social dimension has become more important in family language policy research, e.g. when analysing the impact of the micro and macro environments on the decisions taken in families, or with regard to language management processes in the implementation of these decisions. The investigation of Latvian families in this paper shows that all contexts considered important in Curdt-Christiansen’s model have an impact on the decisions made in these families. The sociolinguistic context is reflected in the respondents’ comments on the polarisation between Latvians and Russophones in Latvian society, which implies that attitudes towards the choice of schools with Latvian as the medium of instruction are not always supportive. The interviews also clearly articulate reasons for the decisions taken and thereby confirm the impact of the socio-political context in Latvia since the re-establishment of independence. In turn, the socio-economic aspect is revealed at least implicitly in the interviews, when the respondents comment on the potential futures of their children, in which value is assigned to Latvian, Russian, and foreign languages. Mostly, however, the narratives of the interviewed families reveal the impact of the socio-cultural context. In all families, respondents are aware of the importance of Latvian for the integration of their children into the Latvian society, but at the same time, they emphasise the roles of the home languag","PeriodicalId":231190,"journal":{"name":"Latviešu valodas apguve. XIII Starptautiskais baltistu kongress : rakstu krājums","volume":"95 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114087148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}