Linguistic Attitudes and Linguistic Practices in the Global Age: The Case of the First Generation of Serbian Highly Educated Migrants

Abstract

In this chapter, 1 we analyse language attitudes and linguistic practices in the global age diaspora through the example of the first generation of Serbian highly educated migrants, those with undergraduate or graduate degree who had left their country of origin during the last two decades. We focus on relations that exist between informants’ attitudes toward the maintenance/shift of ethnic/national identity and language and their actual linguistic practices in home domain, particularly in communication with their children. Through the analysis of data obtained through a questionnaire administered in 2010, we observe the influence of the ideological component in the process of language maintenance/shift in the conditions of life in the global age diaspora. The data obtained through a questionnaire show that this group of informants possesses stable attitudes toward the maintenance/shift of their native language and ethnic/national identity, which do not alter significantly with the length of their stay in the host country. In the age where the media and the internet are highly accessible, these individuals come to the host country with already formed attitudes and expectations which strongly influence their linguistic ideologies. Similarly, their linguistic practices are not likely to change over time, which might point to the fact that right after leaving the country of origin these migrants take on a specific model of linguistic behaviour that significantly influences the process of language shift. Nevertheless, our sociolinguistic analysis indicates that these informants have good preconditions for faster social, economic, and linguistic integration in the majority community and are also considerably closer to cultural and linguistic assimilation than the migrants from the previous immigration waves.