Studying the same heritage language in multiple contexts: the 'Croatian as a diaspora language' project

This paper presents data on a large-scale project across 10 countries that focuses on the use of Croatian as a heritage language amongst first-, second- and third-generation speakers. Two approaches are adopted in this study:... [ view full abstract ]

This paper presents data on a large-scale project across 10 countries that focuses on the use of Croatian as a heritage language amongst first-, second- and third-generation speakers. Two approaches are adopted in this study: a sociology of language one that encompasses a description of the demographic and socio-political position of the language in the recipient countries, together with sociolinguistic data from speakers about their domain-based use of language/s; a contact linguistics perspective that examines spoken data with reference to morpho-syntactic and lexical innovation, including calquing, loan translation and code-switching. This paper supports the position that an examination of linguistic data should make reference to the micro- and macro-contexts in which linguistic data occur.
Macro-social features of ethnolinguistic vitality theory such as ‘status’, ‘demography’ and ‘institutional support’ are presented in relation to the use of the heritage language. This broader snapshot foregrounds information about the sociolinguistic profiles of the approx. 200 heritage language speakers, mainly first- and second-generation speakers, with some third-generation speakers recorded from Argentina and New Zealand. Cross-country differences and parallels are touched on with reference to vintage of emigration, socio-political features of recipient country, ‘linguistic infrastructure’ and demography, and use of the heritage language beyond the home/family domain.
The shift of the paper then turns to aspects of informants’ spoken Croatian. External influence in the changes and innovations occurring in speakers’ spoken repertoires appears obvious in relation to lexical transfers, loan translation and code-switching. All corpora record insertions or alternations supplied from the host-society languages: English, German, Italian, Maori, Norwegian and Spanish. Morpho-syntactic innovations also occur and these appear to be related to speaker generation and the function of Croatian as a receding, but not abandoned language in these speakers’ repertoires. A cross-country comparison of morpho-syntactic features is made to see whether certain structural innovations occur in one context only or co-occur amongst diaspora speakers located across many countries. This latter comparison touches on the question of external but also internal influences in accounting for language change.